


Our Better Nature

by Port



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: spn_j2_bigbang, Dean's Deal, Ethical Dilemmas, Gen, S3 AU, Sam's Powers, Sam-Centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-08
Updated: 2009-07-08
Packaged: 2018-03-05 09:15:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3114434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Port/pseuds/Port
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam kills the Crossroads Demon, but still has a dilemma. On one hand, killing demons and their hosts isn’t getting Dean free of his deal—so far. On the other, the Colt is the only tool in Sam’s arsenal besides his vanished powers. Shaken by the experience of burying the woman the Crossroads Demon inhabited, Sam goes looking for answers. Can he save Dean and still look at himself in the mirror? Meanwhile Dean, at times despite himself, is along for the ride. He only has a year to live, and he's spending it with Sam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to everyone who encouraged me as I was writing and editing. Huge hugs go to Smilla, who suggested I try the challenge again this year, and to her and Carina84, for cheering me on as the wordcount slowly climbed upward. My artist, switch842, provided profound inspiration during the revision process with one artwork after another, starting with the impressive vid she crafted, to the fanmix with the rockin' cover art, right down to the headers and icons that appear here and in the other story posts. I'm so glad she was my artist. Please go enjoy her work and send her some love! Last of all, thank you to the spn_j2_bigbang mods for making this happen.
> 
> Switch842's [Art Post with Vid and Fanmix](http://switch842.livejournal.com/426489.html)

  
_"In a resolute struggle of good against evil, there are definite rules that must not be disregarded if it is to succeed."_

_– Hexagram from the I Ching_

**Prologue**

Sam is at a crossroads, beautiful woman slack where she's fallen in the dirt. Her body is at all angles, twisted at the waist, elbows and knees like corners, even the wrists turned unnaturally. 

Sam inhales through his nose, jaw tight. The Colt is warm in his grip, and he just killed the crossroads demon. He almost wishes he could have shot her twice, three times, a hundred times. Blow through enough bullets, and maybe his rage would escape with them, though it hadn't when he shot Jake.

He stands there a long time, clamping down on the red an inch at a time, until it's receded and he can live alongside it again. He can drive back home, to their latest motel, and when Dean gets cavalier about Hell again, Sam can stand there and not punch the nearest wall. He can keep from – honest to God, he sometimes does want to – putting his hands around Dean's neck and squeezing. He can make himself quiet on the subject of Dean literally trading his life for Sam's own. He can, at least, wait to take it out on someone else who deserves it, another demon, more than one demon.

He can unclench his body and breathe through his mouth again and pretend to be as well-adjusted as he ever has been.

He can, he decides on an exhale.

~~~

**Chapter 1**

Sam and his brother hadn't killed many demons. To be honest, they hadn't even done many exorcisms. That one on the plane, which seemed so long ago, was their first, and they'd fumbled before getting it right. The copilot inhabited by that nameless demon hadn't remembered a thing afterward, but Sam recalled the hot steam rising from the man's torso after Dean doused him in holy water, the sweaty smell as it rose past Sam's face. They'd had a hard time corralling the guy, needing to weaken him first, and then keep him still long enough to complete the incantations, all without drawing attention to themselves from the other passengers. 

The Colt simplified some things. All you had to do was get in range and aim. That demon on the plane went down to Hell and had likely wormed its way up by now. But Yellow Eyes was dead. Not a trace of him was left, neither above nor below.

The same went for the crossroads demon. Another one bites the dust, as Dean would say. One less evil creature free to prey on the desperate. 

She never would have held still for an exorcism. Sam straightened her arms and legs. She fell for the hidden devil's trap once, and wouldn't have again.

Her eyes stared crookedly up at the moon, its light reflected on her pale face. Sam studied the neat bullet hole marring her forehead and grimaced at the mess leaking all over the grass. The physics of a shot to the head never made sense to him. Why didn't the front of the skull shatter as well? He used his flannel over-shirt as a wrap to keep too much matter from falling to the ground when he picked up the body. If he'd thought of it, he would have brought a tarp. But he hadn't come here meaning to kill her. The only thing he'd wanted to end was Dean's deal. This, tonight, wasn't supposed to have been about killing demons. He told himself that.

But it had been so convenient. She would have flown off at the first syllable of an exorcism; the words would have been useless, and he had been angry. She'd been convinced of Sam's helplessness, laughing, smug. A moment later, she'd dropped to the ground, bullet hole crackling. 

Yes, the Colt provided convenience and even satisfaction.

It wasn't just that she'd laughed. Dean had come to her, mired in denial, and she'd bargained him down to one short year. She'd bargained him down to Hell when he was sloppy and needy in his grief, and Sam hadn't been there to stop him. So, yes, he could acknowledge the bite of satisfaction in ending this demon.

Dean had clearly felt the same after killing Yellow Eyes. It had never occurred to Sam to wonder about that host body.

Sam carried the corpse into the brush at the side of the road and kept walking a good distance, far enough away that no one passing would notice him digging a shallow grave. Then he went back to the car and brought back a shovel. He stuck the Colt into his waistband and started to dig.

Convenient to have so many bullets now. Rationing them out had been nerve-wracking. One for that vampire, shot by Dad himself. Another for the demon whose face Sam barely remembered, whose punches had bounced his head off the pavement. Convenient kills, split-second decisions to save a life. Sam felt okay about them. Dad had been satisfied when he killed the vampire; the bullet had worked, and the others would work on the demon who killed Mom and Jess. Dean, though…. Dean had said something to Sam in the cabin, just before their confrontation with Dad and Yellow Eyes. Sam didn't remember what exactly; he'd been concussed, and so much had happened just after. But Dean had told him something morose and regretful. Yeah. "I shot that guy, and I didn't even think." Something like that. I shot that guy.

As much as he wanted not to hear it, Dean's voice kept him company as he dug the hole. 

The problem was, when you shot a demon with the Colt, you also killed a human. And that was the thing, wasn't it? Sam couldn't do it in the cabin; that body with the yellow eyes, that wasn't just a human, it was his dad. Subjectivity changed everything. Easy to kill an innocent, possessed stranger who had hurt your family; not so easy to kill your family. If Sam had to do it again, he still wouldn't have killed Dad in the cabin that night.

When the grave was deep enough for its rim to cast a decent shadow, Sam leaned over the woman whose brains he'd scattered over the roadside. Her black dress shimmered dully, covered with fine dust, and leaves stuck to her matted hair. Not so pretty anymore. The bloodless scratches along her arms and legs had probably come as Sam pushed past the bushes and trees. One of her eyes was open, unfocused and lazy.

Sam knelt by her small body for a while, suddenly wondering who she was. A local, maybe? Some unlucky woman beautiful enough to catch the demon's eye, like a dress at a store; something pretty to wear once and return for a refund.

Some refund.

He inspected her for any identification, even though it was a bad idea. He shouldn't know her name or anything else about her. Sam hadn't killed many people before Cold Oak, besides those few who had deserved it. But he'd killed a few since, and this he knew: he should put her in the ground and cover her up and never tell anyone about the lonely woman under all this dirt. In another life, maybe he did.

Instead, Sam patted her down and found nothing but a gold band around one wrist. It had a simple clasp that took Sam several minutes to figure out and unlock. As expected, the underside did have an engraved message. Sam paused before shining his flashlight on it, and took a shallow breath.

To Jessica, with love

"Shit," he whispered. "Damn it." 

~~

Sam snuck back into the room, took off his shoes, stripped down to his boxers and slipped under the covers. A part of him wanted to turn over, squeeze his eyes shut and return to the peace of a few years ago. He could do that, though not too often. Pretend Jess slept warm beside him. The more he'd learned about why she had died, the less guilty he had felt about it, and the more he had been able to confront his grief and begin to move on. But tonight, her memory brought him back to the year following her death, when evil had been so easy to define.

The thing that killed her. That was evil. Because it had taken her from him, and his job was to kill it in return.

Everything had been simpler then, though no less excruciating. 

Even with his brother's breathing and the hum of passing traffic to lull him, Sam couldn't sleep. He lay down and gave it a try, but he was high on thought, too many conflicts running through his thoughts. 

Maybe he shouldn't have buried her. She had a family, and they'd always be searching.

Maybe he shouldn't have killed her.

It was difficult. He didn't like to rethink decisions. Couldn't see the point. But he'd started this for Jess; now he had the blood of two innocent women on his hands.

And in less than a year, Dean would be dead. Sam had to discover what demon held the contract, and find a way to kill it. Saving Dean had to be his priority. Yet they had several hundred other demons on the loose, out to get them, all wearing human beings like armor, like shields. It would be simple to shoot them down with the Colt. Trapping two hundred demons, one by one, and exorcising them…. It would be a Herculean task.

But two hundred bodies. The idea brought to mind images of the mass graves resulting from war crimes and ethnic cleansing. The seven deadly sins had needed a big grave, one much larger than the pathetic hole Sam had dug tonight. How much ground would swallow so many innocent people?

And why didn't Sam feel damned? Because he should. He should, for believing it would be worth it to save Dean.

Dean, whose breathing had changed.

"You up?" Sam whispered.

Dean's low voice answered. "I'm up. Heard you come in."

"Sorry." They could sometimes talk like this, between beds in the dark. Sam could stare up and not see the ceiling, and listen to Dean talk about whatever weird stuff crossed his mind in the middle of the night. Girls, people he'd met hunting, good restaurants he'd come upon. What to do when you're up against a bandersnatch, or some other creature they both knew perfectly well did not exist. Laughing in the dark when they should be sleeping, it felt intimate and a little transgressive, the way it had when they were kids, Dad out on a hunt or sleeping next door. Sam hadn't thought he would ever miss that.

"So." 

He should have been quieter coming in.

"So, Sam. Colt still working all right?"

Shit.

"Sam. All I gotta do is count the damn bullets in the case."

Which was a good point. "Don't bother, okay?"

A giant huff from the other bed, and the thump of a fist coming down on the mattress. But Sam didn't feel like fighting. He was actually pretty wrung out.

"Well?" Dean asked after a minute. "Did you kill her?"

He'd killed two people tonight. "Yeah." Before Dean could get impatient, justifiably so, Sam added, "She doesn't hold your contract. It belongs to someone else, but she wouldn't say who."

Sam turned over when Dean didn't immediately answer. Dean lay facing him already, puzzled. "Really?"

"That's what she said."

Dean accepted that silently. "Okay," he said. "I guess if you want to break the deal, you should dig up some leads, find out who owns the contract now. You know who would have made a good start?—"

"Shut up, Dean."

She'd made him angry, and she wouldn't have ever said, and if it had been just her, just the demon he'd killed, then maybe he'd be up for this fight. Then he could argue with Dean over his decision to pull the trigger, even though Dean had a point. But he hadn't only killed one person tonight, and it was becoming clearer and clearer that he couldn't justify that.

Yeah, Sam had fucked up.

To Sam's surprise, Dean did stop talking, at least for a minute.

"What's going on with you, Sammy?" Like Dean really wanted to know. Part of Sam really wanted to say, but he'd never been able to. He wasn't like Dean, not built to share or admit or reveal. But maybe he could ask.

"Dean…" Sam started. But what could he ask? Is it wrong to kill people? To kill a demon and a host together? The answer was obvious, shaming him. 

Dean just waited for him to put together his thoughts, lying on his side in the near-dark. Watching, like he really cared what would come out of Sam's mouth. Sam hadn't wanted to think of it so far, but this was his older brother, who had sold off the years of his own life to get Sam back. 

His own life. Nobody else's.

"Dean, let me think for a while, okay? Go back to sleep."

An inscrutable look, and Dean rolled his eyes and turned over. "Next time you go demon-hunting, wake me the fuck up and I'll go with you."

Sam took that for what it clearly meant and figured he'd gotten more than he deserved. Which was exactly what Dean always gave him.

~~

In the morning, Dean woke from a dream in which he sat by Sam's bedside and waited in vain for Sam to wake up. A little freaky to open your eyes afterward and see Sam asleep across from him, but Dean wasn't so far gone as to shake Sam as proof he'd actually get up. Maybe he watched him breathe for a minute, but that was all.

Sam had this habit of staying up too long and thinking too hard, so that he more or less collapsed into sleep when he finally did close his eyes. Then, no matter how anxious or stressed he'd been, he slept hard and for longer than he intended. Dean sat up and could tell by the smoothed lines on Sam's face that this was one of those times. If Sam were only lightly asleep, he'd be all hunched in on himself and frowning, and he might have woken at Dean's first movement. Dean preferred he would; waking before Sam in the quiet morning no longer held any appeal. 

Before he could go further down that road, Dean got up, stretched a few times, yawned loudly, and set up the flimsy little coffee maker on the dresser. When he'd finished, he could tell Sam was awake and just pretending to sleep, but he let him have that and took first shower instead. If Sam needed more time to regroup from last night, Dean sure as hell did too.

Of course Dean had hoped. He was man enough to admit it to himself. Hard to be disappointed, though, when he hadn't ever believed it could be as easy as killing the crossroads demon. She was powerful, but not cautious enough to stay alive long. Dean had gotten her once. Sam had ended her last night. If they could do it, other hunters could too, maybe even particularly clever normal people. Maybe no one had managed to kill her for good until Sam came along, but Dean had known intuitively that nothing anyone did to her could void a contract.

One human life. The cosmic scales would need more than a dead demon to balance out the energies Dean had redirected that night. He knew jack shit about that esoteric crap the New Age market peddled, but everything he knew about world religion told him no one comes back from the dead inexpensively. He didn't mind; if the cosmos considered Dean's life equal to Sam's, who was he to argue? 

Dean had his hair soaped up when he got the feeling. Just a familiar bit of unease, no different from the other twinges that attacked him whenever Sam was out of his sight. Easy enough to downplay at the best of times, but these weren't them, and three weeks ago Sam had vanished between one window pane and the next in the world's smallest diner. 

Dean stepped out of the shower without bothering to rinse and cracked open the door. A streak of sunlight cut across the room, from an open door. Dean saw Sam's hand on the handle, caught a glimpse of Sam's duffle-bag before the door eased shut behind him. 

No, no, no, no, no…. Not happening.

Dean grabbed a towel and jerked it around his waist, then he was all the way across the hotel room, through the outside door and leaving wet footprints on the cement walkway. He had to squint at the brightness, the glare of the sun off car hoods, the sky a more cheerful blue than it had any right to be. With the parking lot only half-full, it was easy to spot Sam sidling up to a run-down Volvo, head lowered and shoulders hunched, hands bunched at waist level.

"I know I didn't raise you to drive a damn Volvo, Sam, so why don't you get your ass back in here."

Sam's head came up at Dean's words, adding a good four inches to his height. He turned around, mouth a thin line, probably ready to go at it again. But then his expression faltered. "Dean."

"What, dude? You want to tell me what you think you're doing?"

Sam laughed, decreasing his age by about a million years. Dean thought if Sam could stay like that, open and young, for the rest of Dean's allotted time, life would be too sweet to ever leave. Then Sam opened his mouth. "Are we seriously going to do this out here?" He gestured at Dean. "Like this?"

Dean looked down at his towel. Yeah, this was weird even for him. He hadn't even thought about what he was doing—Sam left, and Dean followed. That was how it worked, wasn't it? He felt his face go hot and covered for it. "Hey, you're lucky I stopped to put this on. Now get over here before I take it off."

Sam grimaced, seemed to weigh his options, and walked back toward Dean. Dean swatted his head as he passed. "What is wrong with you?"

"Least I'm dressed," Sam muttered. "You have the key?"

"Very funny. Open the door."

"Hey, I wasn't planning on coming back." Sam had always been a stickler for not stealing motel keys. "Don't tell me you left yours inside."

Along with his dignity, yes. Dean wiped shampoo out of his eyes and waved sharply at the lock. "Okay, you wanted to pick locks this morning, go to town."

In less than a minute, the door clicked open and Dean hustled Sam in ahead of him. He pulled off his towel and wiped it over his hair as soon as the door closed and ignored Sam's dismayed sounds. "You want to tell me where you were going?"

"You want to maybe get dressed? Jesus, Dean."

Dude had a point. He went to his bag and pulled out a pair of boxers, then pointed at Sam. "Start talking."

Sam threw his pack on the floor and paced over to the bathroom. For a second, it seemed he might lock himself inside, but he only reached in and shut off the shower. Dean hadn't even noticed it was still running.

Sam did the whole build-up-to-talk thing he always did before saying something he couldn't put into words: a little pacing, scratching his head, making weird faces. Sam usually knew exactly what to say, no matter how he thought anyone would react. He never hesitated to start a fight, disagree, try to instigate the rare personal conversation, whatever. He almost always had words and sentences and paragraphs all bursting to get out of that quick brain of his.

"Okay," Sam finally said. "Look, I…. I think we're taking the wrong tack getting you out of your contract."

Dean rolled his eyes heavenward. "There's no _we_ here, Sammy—"

"Maybe that's part of the problem. I'm not doing this right. I'm doing things I shouldn't."

Something inside Dean twisted so hard it must have shown on his face. Sam looked away. "What have you done, Sam?"

"Nothing! Nothing. I just… need to think. Before I make any more mistakes."

"Damn right you do," Dean said, and didn't feel too bad when Sam actually flinched. The kid was off-kilter somehow, which meant Dean could press an advantage. "You need to listen to me and get off this, and you need to stay where I can fucking see you."

He hadn't meant to make quite so fine a point, but it was true. Dean had about three hundred forty days left, and he needed Sam nearby for every minute. But Sam took it differently. His jaw clenched, and he stood up. "That's just it, Dean! You're not helping, and that's hindrance. I need to talk to someone who'll help me do this right."

Stung, Dean backed off. Sam had always come to Dean for the hard stuff. When he needed help at all, Dean had been there. But he supposed Sam would have to find someone else, eventually. Dean wanted that for him. He wanted Sam to move on. Maybe not so soon, but he did want that. No reason to make it easy, though. 

"So you're just going to slip away without saying anything? Let me step out of the shower and not know where you went? That's mature."

"What am I supposed to do? You won't let me out of your sight."

Dean closed his eyes. "Yeah," he admitted. "Yeah, I won't. You really want to go out there on your own?"

"I have to."

Dean wished he'd stayed in the shower. It would have been easier to find Sam gone. "All right."

"What?"

"I said all right. Get going. Try not to get pulled over in that Volvo. We're both still wanted."

"Am I hearing this? You're just going to let me walk out of here?"

"I never _let_ you do anything, Sam, and you know it. You wanna go, go. Do me a favor and give me a call sometime. I'm not gonna be around forever."

Sam stared at him. "Oh, my God. You're guilting me?"

What? "What? No, I'm not guilting you, Sam. That would be passive-aggressive and… kind of pathetic." Oh, shit. "I'm not freakin' guilting you, smart-ass!"

Sam laughed. "You totally are." 

Dean sat down on his bed, and looked up at Sam. "Look. I have a little time left." Sam's entire face went blank. "Simple fact. And I'm gonna spend it drinking and fighting. You want to waste it running around looking for a solution that doesn't even exist, that's your choice. You can ditch me and go hang out with all the gurus and demon experts you want. But time's wasting, Sam." 

Feeling dumb sitting there in his shorts, waiting for Sam to tell him he'd be in touch, Dean thought about getting his bag out from the bathroom, getting dressed. Then Sam sat down across from him. Their knees touched in the small corridor between their beds, and Dean felt stupidly better with Sam warm and alive and close. Yeah, he'd pretty much passed the point of ever wanting to be alone again. Though he questioned that when Sam cleared his throat and began to speak.

"Jesus. What's so wrong that you don't want to _live_? Not even if there's a chance I can save you. I know it's been…" he waved a hand, "difficult, with Dad, and then me. But this is screwed up. You have a lot to live for. You have me, and Bobby, and, and, the car."

They stared at each other until Dean quirked an eyebrow. "Dude, is that all you got?" They both laughed, Sam with that embarrassed tilt of his head, Dean a little chagrined. Something eased between them. 

"You've got me," Sam said, with finality. "I'm going to get you out of this. Even if I have to go off alone. But if you want to come, you know. You can."

It had never been a case between them of wanting to come along, and Dean had certainly never tagged along with his little brother. Not in so many words. A part of him wanted to say no, to say to hell with your crumb. But he swallowed down his objections. They'd each be on their own in a year. All Dean really wanted was to be together until then. "Good enough. Where are we headed?"


	2. Chapter 2

  


Sam hadn't expected Dean to be happy about going back to Lawrence. That had, after all, been one of the reasons he'd tried to sneak away. Still, he hadn't expected this level of foot dragging.

Before they could get on the road, Dean finished his shower. "I'm getting this shit out of my hair." He turned on the TV while packing up his stuff and turned the volume up loud. Sam eyed him narrowly but said nothing while Dean carefully folded all his clothes and arranged them in his bag.

Then they had to go eat. Sam suggested, with heavy emphasis, a quick stop at a convenience store, so they could eat in the car. He wasn't at all hungry, and he just wanted to get going. If he'd been a little faster, or if he'd somehow suspected Dean would step out of the shower to check on him, he could have been an hour out by then.

They had breakfast at a diner. Sam ordered coffee and a side of eggs. Dean ordered a morning special that included half the breakfast menu. Judging by the way he picked at the dishes set before him, Dean hadn't been hungry either. 

"Come on, man. Take it to go."

Dean shook his head and kept his eyes on the newspaper he had folded atop a plate of biscuits. 

At least, Sam reflected as they sped down the highway, Dean was mostly incapable of driving below the speed limit, even when he tried. And he didn't seem particularly keen on trying right now, if his defeated posture was any measure. Sam tried not to feel too bad. They were making good time, three-hour late start notwithstanding.

He leaned back in the passenger seat, going over the plans he'd made last night, so intent on goals and contingencies that it was some time before he noticed the stiff quiet radiating from Dean.

The motor hummed, and the engine made its usual ambient roar as they climbed a grade on one of those rounded hills New Yorkers called mountains. Reception was pretty bad, but Dean didn't have a tape playing to make up for it.

Sam was growing more used to Dean's silences, though they still disturbed him. As teenagers, Dean had always been loud, joking around, cajoling in response to Sam's studiousness. That was when Dad hadn't been around; with Dad in earshot, Dean had stayed mostly quiet, listening, attentive. Waiting for orders or some minor form of recognition, Sam had believed at the time with a sort of guilty blame in the tone of his thoughts. After Stanford, Dean had been the same as ever, up and leading the way, wherever the way happened to lead. Then Dad came back, and Dean had been quiet. Then Dad died, and Dean had gone quieter and quieter, like Dad was always at his back. 

Dean's one-man party, the one he'd been celebrating since trading his soul for Sam's life—Sam recognized it for what it was. Another kind of silence, an obscuring one.

Sam fidgeted, just the right way. As expected, Dean took that as a conversation starter. 

"The hell you want to do in Lawrence anyway?"

"Get some answers. I need to know what we're dealing with, and I think Missouri might help."

"How? Bobby has the biggest occult library in the lower forty-eight, and he doesn't have a clue how to fix this. What would Missouri know about deals with demons?"

Sam had to admit he'd conflated the deal and his own demon blood. It seemed obvious to him that to break the deal, he would have to face up to the implications of what Yellow Eyes had shown him. Ruby had confirmed those suspicions. She kept hinting that his powers could save Dean, and Sam needed to know for sure. 

You couldn't fight a battle without knowing what was in your arsenal. But he couldn't open that subject with Dean. Not fully. And not only because he didn't want to share the dream vision of Mom in his nursery. It was more than that.

"Missouri is a psychic," Sam said. "And she helps people. That's all I've got right now."

"You think she'll know how to get me out of the deal?" Dean sounded dubious, and guardedly unhopeful.

Sam shrugged. He didn't think she would. But maybe she could give him advice about his powers. There was something canny about her, something in the way she had looked at him when he spoke. And she'd had psychic powers all her life; at the least she could tell Sam how to deal with his, how to use them to help Dean if he had to, if it would save them having to use the Colt.

~~

The next afternoon, they arrived in Lawrence. Dean took the long way around town to get to Missouri's, bypassing their old neighborhood. Neither of them mentioned it.

Dean had been mostly quiet over the trip, and they'd only listened to tapes or the radio a few times, for short periods. Sam had been glad for the chance to think, even after his thoughts began to chase themselves around in circles again. Thinking about what to do and how to do it made it easier to avoid the memory of Jessica, the woman he'd killed, the rubbery texture of her skin as he'd lowered her into the ground… the hint of fruit-scented shampoo that somehow made it past the ochre of the mess he'd made of her head.

Dean hadn't asked about the host. If Sam remembered correctly, the crossroads demon had left the last two women alive and intact. Sam kept waiting for Dean's blame to fall on him, but Dean hadn't seemed to want to discuss it.

They parked in Missouri's driveway and climbed onto the porch to knock on her door. She had potted plants hanging above the railing, big planters next to a lawn chair beside the door. Pansies or something, big floppy colorful flowers with a strong scent. Sam must have been too distracted last time to notice Missouri's green thumb. Then again, hadn't it been late winter? The fall air was crisp. Sam supposed the flowers wouldn't last too much longer.

Dean shifted, drawing himself up a little. Sam had to smile, though he hoped Missouri would lay off his brother this time around. Dean might not be so patient with any grief she sent his way. Dean had been touchy lately.

No one answered the door. 

"Car's not in the driveway," Dean said. "Maybe she's out."

"Could be," Sam said. He looked around the porch. No newspapers piled up. A quick peek showed her mailbox empty too. "I think she'll be back sooner or later."

They sat down on the steps to wait. Dean stretched out his legs, and Sam found himself mimicking him. They'd been in the car since early morning.

Away down the street came the calls and laughter of children playing a game. They didn't seem to mind the crisp air, had probably been playing on this street all summer, autumn making no difference. He and Dean had played outside too, and all seasons had been the same to them, the passing time of little matter. Sam had used to think nothing would ever change. He would never have believed anything could make him shoot down innocent women, or that Dean would ever willingly leave him.

"You ever gonna tell me what's the matter?" Dean asked, eyes intent on a potted plant beginning to wither on the step.

Might as well. "The night before last, I killed an innocent woman. Because I was angry." 

He heard Dean exhale slowly, through his teeth. "She was possessed."

"That's not an excuse."

Dean nodded. "No, I guess not." In profile, Dean looked sad. But he reached over and squeezed the back of Sam's neck. Sam stared down at his bent knees. He hoped he could win the time it would take to figure Dean out. He'd need so much longer than a year.

~~

After a desultory few hours without talking, the afternoon sun lengthened into shadows cast by the houses across the street, and Dean started looking at his watch. Sam considered calling Missouri to find out when she'd be back. He probably should have done so before they drove over, but he'd had a feeling she wouldn't be receptive to seeing them. Whether that was plain intuition or a symptom of his own guilt, Sam didn't know. But he hadn't called, and now she wasn't here. 

"You think we should be worried?" Dean asked. 

Sam shrugged. With the car gone and the door locked, it hadn't seemed right to break in, but if she was gone much longer, maybe they'd be right to try.

Just then, a car turned the corner of the street. Sam recognized Missouri's old station wagon, faded blue and a little rusted. He and Dean stood as it pulled up and stopped along the curb with the motor running.

The window rolled down and Missouri leaned out. "Sam and Dean?"

Sam lifted his hand, suddenly wary. That was not a happy greeting. "Hi Missouri."

Missouri eyeballed him, looked him up and down, from face to knees. She frowned.

"You should have called first," she confirmed, unsmiling. "Now is one of you boys going to move that car out of my driveway, or are you going to make me park out here in the street?"

Dean rolled his eyes at Missouri, but gave Sam a look like, _Oh, yeah. Should have thought about that_ , and went to back the car out of her driveway. That left Sam standing on the grass at the curb, unsure whether to meet Missouri's eyes. She didn't look away from him; nothing in her manner resembled the warm understanding of their first meeting, when she'd condoled him on Jessica's death.

Missouri frowned.

"Sam, I think you'd better go. Your brother's got the car revved up, and he's more than ready to leave. You shouldn't have brought him back here."

Sam considered begging and demanding, unsure which would work, and settled merely for the truth. "But I need your help." 

"It's too late for that, Sam. You're beyond any help I can give you. Now get go—" She reared back in her seat, though Sam hadn't thought he'd moved aggressively enough to warrant it. He squeezed the sides of her open window. 

"No! That's not true, Missouri, and you know it. You know it." She had to, because she could read his mind, and he knew himself. He was better than this. He was.

"Sam! What the hell are you doing?" Dean jogged up to them from across the street, gripped Sam's shoulder and pulled him back, Sam unresisting. Dean looked from him to Missouri and back, but Sam didn't answer or reassure him, just kept his eyes on Missouri. She glared back at him, still leaning away from the window. "Someone want to tell me what's going on?" Dean shook Sam's shoulder, roughly.

They both ignored him as Missouri straightened herself in the seat. "You think this world revolves around you, Sam Winchester? That it cares about your redemption? You had your chance to do things right after Cold Oak, and you blew it. And kept blowing it. Look what you've done since."

Reflexively, Sam started to argue. There had been _reasons_ to kill those people. Circumstances. But that was the problem. There would always be a rationale; he needed alternatives.

But something else made him pause. The way she said Cold Oak, like it wasn't just a couple of words she'd picked from his brain. Something resounded in those words, familiarity and bitterness. "What do you know about Cold Oak?"

Missouri's mouth tightened. 

~~

She let them in grudgingly, perhaps feeling she had no choice. Dean followed Sam through her door, Missouri's grocery bag slung under one arm, close to Sam's back yet oddly tentative. He clearly had not expected Sam and Missouri to fight. It must have fucked with Dean's instinct to back Sam up. Unbalanced or not, though, he did keep close to Sam, presenting a united front. Sam wondered what it would finally take for Dean to disclaim him.

"If he hasn't by now…." Missouri trailed off as she shook her head at Sam. They'd made it to her kitchen. Sunlight filtered in through lacy curtains, and Sam glanced through them to see a garden in a green backyard. The kitchen had yellow shelves with Pennsylvania Dutch patterns stenciled on in light colors. The room was tidy, with a clean sink and fruits and vegetables stored here and there. Missouri's gaze shifted over Sam's shoulder to rest on Dean, who returned it evenly. "Oh, honey. Put the groceries on the counter."

As Dean followed her instructions, Sam became aware again of his brother's silence and wondered when it had begun. It really did appear at odd moments.

"Missouri, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to… you know." He looked down, sheepish. When had he been that guy, who frightened old ladies?

"I'm not that old, Sam," she said, harsh but without the cold bite of a few minutes ago. "You two might as well sit down." She left the groceries on the countertop and led them into the same sitting room they'd spoken in on the day they'd met. Sam and Dean awkwardly sat down next to each other, the couch a little smaller than Sam remembered.

"You've put on some muscle," she said. Dean looked between them; psychic stuff always got his back up. Sam felt his cheeks warm.

A moment passed. Sam had questions he couldn't put into words. "Missouri, I didn't come here to disturb you. Or, or scare you. But you're the only psychic I know, and I thought…."

"You thought I'd have a magical answer for you, some sort of easy solution to your problems."

Sam bit his lip, feeling like an ass.

"Well, Sam, I've been psychic since I was twenty-two years old." Like she'd drawn a gun, Dean jerked, and Sam's head shot up. Missouri disregarded them to continue. "And that has nothing to do with the simple fact that if you want to stop killing people, you just stop killing people. Easy as pie. I don't know why you want to make a big production out of it."

She didn't say, Now get out of my house, but she might as well have.

Dean's sudden stillness signaled to Sam that he had a knife in his boot, and a gun at his waistband. Sam laid a hand on his knee.

"Missouri. Are you telling us you… you're like me?" 

"Not in the ways that count, apparently." She sniffed. "But yes, Sam. I became a psychic the same way you did. You and, what were their names? Ava. Lily and Andy. Jake."

Sam turned quickly to Dean and back again, wanting to veer away from the subject of how his powers came to be. The less Dean knew about the demon blood, the better. Missouri _tsked_ at him, but said nothing.

"And Cold Oak," Sam said. "You know about Cold Oak."

"I should," she replied. "I spent three months there when I was twenty-four."

Dean, thigh pressed up against Sam's, tensed even more.

"You're one of the special children," Sam said.

"That's what the yellow-eyed man called us. Didn't feel very special at the time. More like cursed."

Sam nodded. He felt cursed too. "But you made it out of there. You were the last one?"

She threw up her hands. "Boy, are you paying attention? What happened when you won that sick game? Did he say you could go home and pick up your life? Did that gate to Hell look like it had ever been opened before?"

"Then what did you do? What happened after he brought you to Cold Oak? How did you escape?"

Missouri stood up and walked around to the back of her chair. She paced a short distance, clearly at odds with herself over what to say. At their first meeting, she had threatened to hit Dean with a spoon; now, by the expression on her face, she maybe wanted to hit Sam with something bigger.

"Just tell me, Missouri. Please."

"Oh, you're not going to like this," she replied. "And I'm not going to like telling it."

"So get on with it," Dean barked. "You want us out of here, spit it out."

Perhaps because he'd been silent till now, Dean's outburst got Missouri to sit down, take a deep breath and say, "You're right, Dean. I won't draw this out. I'm going to tell you a story, and then you're going to leave."

Maybe that wouldn't be a bad idea. It clearly would not be a happy story. At Sam's nod of agreement, Missouri began.

"Fifty years ago, my mother was killed in a house fire. We didn't have a nursery." Dean was holding his breath. "Twenty-eight years ago," Missouri continued, "I was sitting in my living room. With my husband." Sam realized then that Missouri lived alone, no sign of another resident in the house. No family pictures either. "The next thing I knew, I woke up in this decrepit little town, alone and cold, still in my slippers. I was the first. I tried to hike out, but the demons in the woods made it clear I should stay. When I slept, the man with the yellow eyes showed me horrible things. He showed me my mother on the ceiling." She stared hard at Sam, intimating she'd seen more than that. Sam swallowed, willing her not to say. "He told me the rules, and then the next day, a boy my age appeared. His name was Robert. The week after that, a girl showed up, Stephanie. And so on, through the months. We all had strange abilities, and some of us had lost our mothers at six months, in house fires."

Dean twitched. Sam absently put his hand over Dean's knee, only to get it brushed aside.

"What happened?" Sam breathed. After Jake killed him, Sam had come to believe there really hadn't been another way out of Cold Oak. 

Missouri's face creased into sadness. "We became great friends, the eighteen of us. Every night, the yellow eyed man told us to kill each other; every day, we talked it out, reassured each other. Rob, the boy who showed up that second day, he and I knew right from wrong, and we set the tone for everyone else the demon brought."

"And nobody turned? Not one person?"

"We never laid a finger on each other." The sadness etched across her face, Sam realized, wasn't for herself and her friends, but for Sam and his generation. He cast his eyes down at her rug. "Oh, we had temptation. Most of us had come into our powers by then, and we wanted out of that place so badly. Wanted to get back to our families and our lives. But it's a funny thing. I don't know what was different about us. Why we passed the test and your group turned on each other. Why the demon let us go after a time. Why did you kill Jake, Sam?"

"You know what, Missouri?" Dean stood and pointed at her before Sam could answer. "Why don't you get off your high horse and take some responsibility here? If this happened, then you knew what was coming when you met our dad. You knew the demon was going to snatch Sam the same way it did you. The hell didn't you say anything?"

Missouri stood as well, as if she could use height to her advantage. "Do not yell at me in my own house, Dean Winchester."

"I'll yell if I want to," Dean said, at less volume. "Do you know what we've been through while you sat here in Lawrence with all the answers? Do you know how much we've lost?"

"I keep telling you I don't tell the future, Dean. Now I'm sorry, but I did the best I could for your family."  
  
"Lady, you didn't do shit for my family."

"Watch your mouth."

If Missouri had been a man, it would have gone to violence right there. As it was, Sam jumped between them. "We're going. Okay? We're getting out of here." He grabbed Dean's arm, pulling him away from the couch, but Dean wrenched out of his hold and pushed Sam back.

"I'm not leaving until she tells us. Missouri. You let this happen to us. You let our dad go hunting for the answers you already had. You let him drag us around like—like—"

"Breathe, Dean." Missouri folded her arms across her chest, defensively. She gave Dean a few moments to get hold of himself, and said, "I didn't know your father would become a hunter. I only told him about what's in the dark because I thought it would ease his mind. Your father saw something unnatural that night, and he thought he was crazy. I just wanted to reassure him, let him know he could believe his own eyes. I thought it would help him move on."

"You could read his mind. You knew he wasn't going to do that. And you knew what would happen to Sam, because it happened to you. You should have told him, Missouri."

She sighed. "I didn't want to send him off to die. John was a veteran, but he didn't know the first thing about hunting. If he'd gone after the demon straight off, he'd have been slaughtered. So I only told him as much as he needed to hear."

Dean clearly wanted to get up in Missouri's face, but he wasn't the kind of guy who would do so, even as every line of his body signaled otherwise. "So you get to decide what anyone needs to hear, huh? Why you, Missouri? What gives you the right to cherry-pick the truth for everyone else?"

Nonplussed, Missouri said, "Because it's safer that way. Too much knowledge is dangerous, Dean. And that's what I have. Too much knowledge for anybody's good."

"You let our dad go off blind. Everything he ever hunted, every time he put himself and us in danger, he did it because you left off the whole truth."

Lightheaded, Sam sat heavily on the couch. If what he suspected was true, it might be difficult to get Dean out of here. He asked anyway. "Missouri, did you ever talk to our dad after that?"

As though anticipating Dean's reaction, Missouri walked around to the back of her armchair, putting it between her and Dean. "John and I kept in touch. By the time you were twenty-two, Sam, I knew your father was no longer an amateur hunter. I also knew that the clock was running down for you and the other children marked by the demon. So I called your father and told him what I told you tonight. About Cold Oak and the test. When he got over his anger at me—" she looked significantly at Dean—"he went looking for a weapon to use against a demon."

Dean had gone still. He said quietly, "This was in October, year before last?"

Missouri glanced warily at him. "Yes."

"Shit," Sam muttered. So he was right. Missouri got in touch with Dad just before Jess was killed. "You must have reached him when he was working the job in Jericho. He took off right in the middle, and…."

And they spent a year searching for him.

"You were the lead he was following," Dean said, slowly. "That was how he found out it was a demon. And then we came along and you didn't say a thing." He paced away and then back, disbelieving. "Do you realize what it would have meant for us to all be on the same page? We saw you, we met you and asked you these same questions, and you lied to us!"

Missouri shrugged. "I'm sorry, Dean. Your father asked me not to tell you, and I had faith in him. He was driven. I thought he had a chance. And I had faith in Sam. As soon as we met, I believed he would do the right thing if he did get called to Cold Oak. And I see he tried at first. I don't think that trust was misplaced."

"Well, I'm glad your ‘faith' and ‘trust' weren't misplaced." Sam had to agree with Dean's sentiment. Dad was dead, two hundred demons had been set loose, Sam had died, come back and killed four people, and this time next year Dean would be burning in Hell. Dean looked a little lightheaded himself. "Come on, Sam."

Sam followed. He thought loudly, "I'm coming back," and didn't turn to check that Missouri had caught it.

   
~~

Sam hadn't thought they'd spent that much time with Missouri, but when they left, evening had fallen into night. He trailed Dean across the street and into the car. Dean didn't say a word as he gunned the engine, but Sam knew they'd be on the freeway out of town if he didn't speak up now.

"You're not going to like this."

Dean turned, disbelieving, to Sam.  
  
"I know. But I need to talk with her again."

Dean braked hard and shifted into park. They hadn't even gone more than a few yards. "You've got five minutes."

Like Dean would leave him if he took longer. Sam shook his head. "Not right now. I'm as angry as you are—"

"Oh, I doubt that, Sammy."

"—but I need to talk to her again. I still think she can help."

"Help you with what, Sam? You think she has a get out of Hell free card in her purse?"

"No, but—"

"But you think she can help you. Listen Sammy. The only thing she said that made sense was the bit about not killing people. You really want to stop killing demon hosts, all you gotta do is stop shooting 'em. Course that means letting the demons get away with possessing the poor bastards and who knows what else. But it's still your choice, Sam. No one said this was going to be easy."

Sam shook his head. He wondered what Dean would say if he told him he sounded like Ruby. "There has to be something else I can do, Dean. Exorcism isn't always practical, and the Colt kills innocent people. We need more options." That had been all he'd wanted to discuss with Missouri. Why did everything have to be so complicated?

Dean shrugged unevenly. "I'm with you. But I don't think Missouri knows what those are."

"I have to ask her. I'm not leaving until I know for sure."

"Of course not," Dean muttered. He made a gesture of "fine, whatever" and shifted back into gear. When he turned to the main drag instead of following the signs to the highway, Sam sat back in his seat and started looking for a motel. Usually they were tricky to spot, even though Sam had developed a knack for finding them over the years.

"How about that place we stayed last time?" he finally suggested, when all he could see were pricey chain hotels. Dean shrugged and got into the turn lane. Within minutes and without a wrong turn at all, they pulled into the parking lot at the Heavenly Gates Motel. Dean set the brake and leaned back in the seat, making no move to get out.

Sam sighed. "Credit card?"

Dean gave a put-upon sigh and reached into his back pocket. They still hadn't been able to replace the cards and other contents of Sam's pockets that had been lost when Yellow Eyes grabbed him. A glance at the Visa Dean handed him showed the name Jon B. Jovi, and, even used to the hair band aliases, Sam had to laugh. Dean looked over, surprised out of his sulk, and rolled his eyes.

When they got into the room, Dean slammed the door, but it was half-hearted. "I freakin' hate this town, Sammy."

Sam knew. He wasn't sure which he regretted more: getting caught as he tried to sneak out, or dragging Dean back to this place. Because Dean really did hate it here. A term from a long-ago psychology class drifted up. Return of the repressed.

"It's just for another day," he said, knowing how feeble that sounded.

"Whatever. Can I trust you to order a pizza and not run out while I take a shower?"

Something in Sam burned. He couldn't tell if it was anger or shame. "I'll be right here."

  
~~~

In the morning, Dean was still in bed when Sam woke up and started getting ready to go out. He didn't bother asking to Dean to come, not only because he didn't want him there, but because he was pretty sure Dean didn't want to go in the first place. By the time he pulled on his sneakers, Dean pushed himself up on his arms and eyed him blearily. "You really think this is a good idea." Even Dean didn't seem sure if it was a question or a statement.

"I'll be back before dark," Sam said. 

Dean sank back down under the comforter. "Don't take the car."

"You're gonna make me take the bus? Christ, Dean—"

"Don't wanna hear it. I want the car today, so deal."

Sam stuffed his computer into his backpack in retaliation. He wouldn't need it at Missouri's but fair was fair.

He asked the bus driver for directions and felt vindicated for taking the laptop when he learned how many transfers he'd need. They weren't anywhere near Missouri's neighborhood.

Once the final bus dropped him off, Sam started to recognize the area. It was about three quarters of a mile to Missouri's, and by the time he got there, the sun had come out, strong despite the season; he might get burned. As he turned the corner of her block, the kids from yesterday, or maybe some other kids for all he knew, came into sight, sitting on a curb watching one of their friends awkwardly perform tricks on a skateboard. The ones who paid him any attention as he passed looked at him curiously.

Missouri answered her door. "You're late, Sam. Well, come on in. We'll get you cooled off, then get started."

Sam hesitated before entering. He had not expected to be welcomed.

"Well, you seem set on me helping you," Missouri said over her shoulder, as though answering something he'd said aloud. "Don't think you're ready to take no for an answer, so I'll show you what I've got. For what it's worth. And if it somehow helps you save your brother, then I'm fine with that as well."

She led him into her kitchen, with its lacy curtains, and poured him a glass of lemonade from a pitcher. Sam stared at the tall glass; last night he couldn't have imagined coming back here to drink lemonade with Missouri, and he still didn't feel quite right about it, knowing how her decisions had affected his life. But if she could help now…. Bottoms up, he thought, taking a sip. 

Missouri nodded at him, and he realized she probably knew exactly what he'd been thinking. She put up a hand to forestall whatever he had been going to say about that. 

"Sam, I want to apologize. I still think I did the right thing, given what I knew at the time, but it didn't turn out the way I would have wanted it. I'm sorry, if anything I could have done would have changed things."

Carefully, Sam set down his glass on the white tile counter. To be honest, he might be able to put aside his anger for a time, but it didn't change the fact that they'd come to her in good faith, back when they were searching for Dad and looking for answers about Jess's murder. He didn't appreciate lies, but he had to admit he'd used them himself, that he'd withheld things from Dean that he thought would hurt him or change things between them. This was the first time he'd considered it, actually. Maybe by not telling Dean some things, about the demon blood, about Ruby, he was actually being just as manipulative as Missouri had been.

Missouri sighed and looked down. Sam thought, not for the first time, that spending time with a psychic could get old pretty fast.

"No, it's all right," he finally said. "I get why you did it. I wish you hadn't, but it's done and there's nothing you can do to fix it."

"That's not true, Sam. I certainly can't undo what's been done. But I can try to make things better for you now."

Sam nodded. "Dean only has a year. I need to kill whoever holds his contract. Only I don't know who that is or how to find out."

"And you're less and less sure about using the Colt to solve your problems. Come over to my office, Sam. We'll try to work this out."

Missouri led him down a hall and up the stairs. The stairs would be giving her trouble in later years, judging by the way she gripped the banister.

"Don't you put me down for the count just yet, Sam Winchester. I've still got a long way to go before these steps get the best of me."

Sam felt himself redden. "Can't you turn off the mind-reading for a while? That's not fair."

Missouri shook her head. "My control isn't quite that fine-tuned. For what it's worth, I'm only picking up surface thoughts right now. I don't generally pry closer than that."

Sam followed her to a close-walled room. The window was northern exposure, letting in less light than in the kitchen, and draped with darker, heavier cloth. There was a burgundy leather sofa, which gave a soft puff of air when Missouri plopped down on one side. Also a matching chair, but she gestured him to sit on the other side of the couch.

Sam had a question. "Your powers…."

"Yes, honey?"

"They come from the demon blood, like mine." She nodded. "But you use them all the time."

"There aren't any side effects, Sam. I can't get rid of them, so I gotta make the best of things."

The best of things. She'd gone home after Cold Oak, picked up the pieces. Lived quietly, and set up a side business as a psychic. Missouri laughed. "That's about it. Especially the living quietly part. My power has more potential to hurt than you'd think, Sam. Words can hurt. Revelation hurts. Most people shouldn't be told the things that are so clear to me."

Sam didn't want to revisit the subject of their revelations last night. "My dad told Dean…. He said he might have to kill me. I might go dark-side. If he knew about the demon blood—"

"He did. Sam, since you came into your powers, what have you done?"

"You know the answer to that. I killed Jake. And two demons in human hosts a few weeks ago. Then I killed the crossroads demon and the woman she was riding."

Missouri looked less sympathetic than she had a minute ago. 

"I know that was wrong."

"Honey, you killed four people. Wrong is an understatement."

It was such a relief for someone to tell him that, for someone to pass judgment on his actions. Dean had pretty reliably taught him right from wrong, growing up, but the demands of the last few years had hardened his brother, made him more tolerant of the exigencies of survival.

"Dean has his own problems, Sam. This is about you."

"I know. I just… I don't know what to do anymore."

"You just need some more alternatives. Now listen close."


	3. Chapter 3

  


Dean slept as late as he could, but Sam had left the drapes open, damn him, and the sun eventually made the room stuffy and close. Finally, Dean had to get up and close out the sun, turn on the air conditioner. The machine made a racket as it kicked on, then settled into a busy hum. Dean sat down on the bed and stared blearily at it, thinking disjointed thoughts about air conditioners in Hell, and how if he somehow brought one it might make him pretty popular. That led to thoughts of who he might meet, demons he'd exorcised and spirits he'd burned. He wondered if you could fight down there, or if they kept you caged up all the time, helpless.

More sleep didn't sound too bad, but a few minutes lying atop the covers didn't yield it. He wondered what Sam was doing.

Outside on the balcony was just as muggy and hot as inside the hotel room. Dean stretched and looked around at the enclosed lot, checking the car was still there and in one piece. It looked fine, gleaming black and outshining the later models in the dingy lot. He spotted a more recent model Impala and smirked down at it.

No cops in sight either, Dean's check more reflexive than conscious. He got a little itchy even in midsize cities, knowing Henricksen was out there with his APBs and most wanted posters and whatever other shit the FBI used to hunt down the bad guys. He wondered if his and Sam's hometown was a more or less obvious spot for them to go? They hadn't ever lived here or in the area, not since Dean was four. And he had a feeling Henricksen knew somehow that Dean wouldn't willingly return. He'd gotten so much wrong, but the conclusions he'd drawn had been perceptive nonetheless. Creeped Dean the fuck out, knowing that guy was profiling him.

"Come on, Sam. Get back here and let's book it."

When Sam didn't magically appear down in the lot or on the stairwell at the end of the balcony, Dean decided it was time for research and porn. Not necessarily in that order.

Ten minutes later, he was dressed and in a diner, stuck with the local newspapers in a stack beside a cup of coffee. Sam was a bastard.

~~

No electrical storms, cattle mutilations, missing persons, alerts to be on the lookout for the infamous and psychotic Winchester brothers, or anything else up their alley. Dean folded up the last paper and picked at his remaining eggs. He hadn't bothered to order as much as usual; the pleasure of eating whatever he wanted without long-term consequence had died down recently. It had mainly been a thing he did around Sam, anyway. In a year, he wouldn't have to worry about repetitive diner menus or the cops or that funny distraction he felt without Sam at his side. He was glad and relieved, and he wished he could express that to Sam without having to outright say it.

Meanwhile, he had nothing to do while Sam did his thing with Missouri-Wan Kenobi. Nothing to hunt, and he had hours before Sam came home, probably longer than he would have if he'd lent Sam the car, but he still felt a perverse satisfaction over making him take the bus. Back in the old days, before Dean was a wanted man and had a couple hundred demons on his tail to boot, he would have gone to a movie. He sometimes used to do that when Sam stayed after at drama club or whatever in high school, to kill time before picking him up. Later on, alone on hunts, he could kill a few days that way, shacking up near a big multiplex with a bar or pool hall not too far away. When he could find a girl on top of all that, it was heaven. Not even just the sex, but taking her out the next day, his arm over her shoulder, her head on his in the dark.

Briefly, he considered finding a girl at a bar for a quick roll, but it was still only just after noon, and besides—

"Fuck this."

He drove over to Missouri's and parked along the curb down the street. Area seemed peaceful. He settled in to wait.

~~

Missouri packed Sam a care package of dinner over his protestations. Dean wouldn't want anything to do with food from Missouri, but he smiled and took it when she handed it to him, and Missouri pretended she couldn't read his thoughts. Sam stuck the food in his bag as he walked down the porch. He could take the bus back to the motel, but he thought it might be better to call Dean for a pick-up. Not just because he didn't want to spend an hour and a half crowded in with tired people coming home from work, but because Dean had been twitchy lately and might feel better that way.

The decision, however, turned out to be moot. Sam stopped on the sidewalk and stared toward the end of the street. He blinked.

Dean had his back to him as Sam approached, but he looked over his shoulder briefly after he caught a softball thrown by a skinny boy in his preteens. "Hey, Sammy!"

Sam stopped a safe distance away from the triangle Dean and two of the neighborhood kids had formed. The boy and girl wore mitts, Dean catching barehanded before throwing the ball again. "Good catch," he called to the girl. "Nice hustle."

Only Sam's brother. Sam sat down on the curb to watch.

Dean threw straight, not too hard, but fast enough to give the kids a little challenge. When they threw over his head, he ran to catch it and seldom couldn't. Here and there, he paused the game to approach the kids with pointers. He showed the girl—she might have been twelve, with pigtails and wearing shorts and a tank-top—the difference between a knuckleball and a curveball. She didn't get the hang of the curveball, but picked up the mechanics of the other pretty fast. She and the boy had some competition going on, but Dean didn't favor either of them, and they seemed not to care.

Dean had stripped down to his t-shirt, some clean sweat at the neck, and his hair looked blonder in the open air and sun than it did in the car or motel rooms or at night digging graves. He wore an unselfconscious smile, different from the one he offered Sam these days, more convincing because it wasn't meant to convince.

After a few minutes, Sam noticed some younger kids hanging around. At least two climbing the tree in a yard across the street, and another sitting in the shade of a pick-up truck, reading a thin paperback. Sam couldn't see the title.

Their shadows grew a little longer. Eventually one of the kids climbed down from the tree and asked to play catch. The boy and girl groaned, but Dean smiled and threw a soft underhanded pitch. The boy caught it and squealed. Dean grinned over at Sam. He had two hundred days to live.

The catch fell apart soon after, when the littler kids decided to join and the two elder ones got bored and left on a pair of ten-speeds, waving to Dean. Dean said so long to the shorter kids and gestured at Sam to get up.

"You got your laptop?"

Sam rolled his eyes and followed Dean to the Impala. "Got some food too. Missouri made it."

"Don't want it."

Inside, the Impala wasn't as bad as Sam had feared. The windows were open and it had been sitting in good shade. "How long have you been out here anyway?"

Dean shrugged and gunned the engine. Sam actually felt refreshed and a little light for once, but he started in on Dean out of habit.

"You really aren't going to let me out of your sight, are you? No, really. You can't even shower without checking. And I was at Missouri's all day."

Dean's face colored. "I'm starving. We can grab a bite and let the traffic die down before we get back on the road."

"No, I need another day or two."

Dean thumped the wheel, but he only said, "Fine. Then we'll just grab a bite. Happy?"

Maybe someday, Sam thought, though he was beginning to doubt it.

~~

Sam's accusation that Dean couldn't let him out of his sight seemed to have struck home. The second night, Sam didn't find Dean nearby when he left Missouri's house, and came back to the motel hot and grimy from riding the bus, tired from a day trying to meditate. It was after dark. Dean had about a dozen boxes of Chinese food spread out on the little table by the window, half of them open, and a pair of chopsticks held awkwardly in his hand. Dean heralded him silently as he came in, with a wave of the chopsticks, as if to say, "See, you were so wrong."

Sam nodded as though Dean had said just that, and sat down in the opposite chair.

"Dude, you smell like cigarettes."

"Dude, you kept the car again." Sam grimaced, though, noticing Dean was right. He got up and went for the sink. The water ran grey down the drain as he washed his hands and face. Sweat and dirt. Nothing new, not even the smell of ash. "How are those chopsticks working out for you?"

"Go to hell," Dean remarked. 

"You fir—" Sam bit his tongue. It had been an automatic comeback.

Dean studied him evenly, then went back to work on his dinner.

Sam wanted to sit down and have some too, but suddenly a shower seemed like a better idea.

"Don't be an idiot, Sammy. Come over here while it's still hot."

When he sat down, Dean nudged his foot. He had that serious face he occasionally wore in mockery of Sam's own seriousness. It struck Sam that no one would ever look at him that way but Dean. Sadness didn't sit well with food, but Sam unpacked the remaining containers and piled a Styrofoam plate with the contents.

"So. What are you doing over there anyway? She making you wax her car? Paint her deck?"

Dean had been curiously uninterested in the subject until now. Maybe he knew Sam wouldn't get up and avoid the conversation while there was food piled in front of him. He was right. At any rate, Sam wasn't interested in keeping it a secret.

"Missouri has a different approach to demons than Dad did," Sam said. Dean grunted. "She says it's better to trick them than fight them. Better to beat them at their own game."

_"The best we could determine, the yellow-eyed man could only keep us there for a set time. When it elapsed and nobody had hurt each other, he had to let us go free."_

"So how is that helpful?" Dean asked. "We don't know whether they're playing Parcheesi or Trivial Pursuit. I really hope it's not Trivial Pursuit. You suck at that."

"I do not," Sam said, raising an eyebrow as a chunk of chicken slipped from between Dean's chopsticks. He pointedly speared a slice of beef with one of his own and stuck it in his mouth. "We're working on finding out how to outsmart them. Maybe I can get you out of the deal without hurting anyone else."

"Without using the Colt or your powers." Dean nodded, apparently satisfied with that goal. "You know I'm not helping with this."

"Yeah."

They ate in silence. Dean passed Sam a beer. He hadn't noticed the six pack on the floor behind Dean.

"How exactly do you plan to figure out the demon's game?"

Sam bit his lip. Dean was going to love this. "Auto-writing, actually."

"Auto-writing. For real?"

"She says it works. And it doesn't use our… you know."

"Your freakish abilities," Dean said, mostly ironic. He looked intrigued, but dubious. "How does it work?"

"Well, first you pray. Shut up. You pray, and set your mind on something you want to know. A problem, or an answer. You close your eyes, find a meditative state, and hold a pencil over a piece of paper. She did it herself. It was kind of cool."

"What did she find out?"

"She asked about her cat. Turns out it's diabetic."

"You're putting me on."

"No, really. She wrote it in big letters. ‘Cinderella has diabetes.'"

"Missouri named her cat Cinderella?"

Sam had to admit that was kind of funny, though he wouldn't let on to Dean. "Cinderella has an appointment at the vet tomorrow, so I can't go over again yet. I'll have to keep practicing here."

Dean made a face of relief, quickly hidden. "Missouri set to teach you any other mumbo jumbo? Or can we get out of here soon?"

Sam shrugged. He preferred to stay until he got the auto-writing to work. Dean appeared to read that in his shrug and let the matter drop.

~~

The thing about doing anything in the same motel room as Dean was, you couldn't. And trying to do anything with him in a motel room in Lawrence, Kansas, was pretty much futile.

In the morning, Sam took a shower, put on his pair jeans that hung loosest from his hips, and sat on his bed with his legs folded under him. Dean looked up from beneath his blankets to watch, and Sam tried to ignore him as he said a brief prayer. 

_"The prayer centers you, but it also establishes your intentions as pure."_ So said Missouri. Sam fidgeted, the bedcovers scratchy against his bare ankles. He said a silent prayer he feared was half-threat. Dear God, please let me save Dean.

That over with, Sam pulled his notebook off the bedside table and grabbed a pen. Setting the open notebook on his lap and holding the pen easily in his hand, he again closed his eyes. _"Think of a problem. The more specific the better. I want to know why my cat's so thirsty."_

I want to know how to escape Dean's deal.

_"And then you meditate."_

Sam had always found this hard, even before his nightmares became premonitions. Since Jessica, he distrusted sleep, distrusted it more after his visions sent them to their old house and Max. Following his possession by Meg, which he spent mostly in a void while his body ran around killing people, Sam had decided sleep was overrated. Trying to tap into anything subconscious now was not too far from anathema.

_It's all in your breath, Sam._

He evened out his breathing. Count of six on the inhale, four on the exhale. 

This went on until he got pretty lightheaded.

"You should see your face. You look so annoyed." And of course Dean was laughing at him. He opened his eyes to find Dean sitting cross-legged in his underwear on the floor in front of his bed, where he had a great frontal view of Sam's impression of the Buddha.

"I'm trying to meditate here, Dean." He looked down at his pad. It had a few squiggles where the pen must have brushed it accidentally. Disgusted, he tossed it aside.

"Siddhartha Gautama you are not, Sam. Come on, let's go eat."

Sam rolled his eyes and looked at the clock. He'd killed an hour trying. Maybe he could get an hour somewhere else, without Dean staring at him and damaging his bliss or whatever.

~~

After breakfast, Dean expressed interest in leaving again. "You can do this meditation thing anywhere, right?"

"I don't think I can do it in the car, and wherever we go, we'll probably run into more trouble. I want to get it done while we still have a moment's peace."

Dean scuffed his boot heel over the pavement. All around them, the city went on with its business, cars sliding past, shops and stores open for business. Dean had said on their previous trip that the city had grown. Sam, of course, had no basis for comparison, but he had to admit it didn't match up to his childhood impression of a small, sleepy town. He wondered if Dean had embellished that aspect in the stories he'd told as a kid. 

"Let's find a park," Sam suggested. "I can sit down and do my thing. Maybe you can find a boy your own age to play with."

The look Dean gave him was as contemptuous as Sam had hoped it would be. Another one no one else would ever aim at him. He smiled and drank it in, telling himself he wouldn't have to store it up for a distant absence.

They drove around until Dean found a city park. Midday, it had its share of dog-walkers and men and women in business dress taking their lunch breaks in the spring air. Sam spotted a shady knot of trees, concealed well enough from the path, and pointed at it. "I'll be over there." Dean had gotten a hunted look on his face. "You all right?"

"Yeah. Hold on and I'll park. Go with you."

Sam rolled his eyes. "This might work better without an audience."

From his expression, Dean clearly didn't believe it would work at all. But he said, "Fine. Call me when you're done."

Sam lifted a hand after the Impala as Dean drove off. It needed a wash; maybe Dean would go do that. 

~~

Half an hour later, Sam still hadn't reached a meditative state or written anything in his notebook. Maybe I have writer's block, he mused, scratching under his ear. He was pretty sure it was still mosquito season down here.

Sam rolled down onto his back. The devil of it was, he could see Missouri's point. Force only got you so far when you didn't even know what game your enemy was playing. And a weapon like the Colt didn't necessarily make things better. _"It's like the bomb, Sam. More effective in the threat than the use."_

Sam didn't completely agree. Some things needed to die. Yellow Eyes. The crossroads demon. Whoever she worked for, who now held Dean's life in his hands. Sam needed to see that last demon destroyed, and he was honest enough with himself to know he'd kill another host if that was what it took.

Still, it would help to have a clearer picture of what was going on. Dean was supposed to be the one who went in guns blazing. When had Sam become so like him?

Over in his pack, his cell rang. Dean. Sam flipped it open. "You done yet?"

"Actually, I guess I am. How did you…" He turned around, scanning the park, and saw Dean sitting on a bench fifty yards away. Waving. Sam snapped the phone shut and picked himself up.

~~

Dean felt unusually self-conscious as Sam walked toward him across the grass. He had that frown and look in the eyes like maybe he wanted to talk or hug. Dean grimaced. He should have backed off for a while longer.

"I give up," Sam said. "Take out the handcuffs and let's just get it over with already."

"Kinky," Dean said. Because really, that was the only thing he could have said.

Sam sighed. Luckily, he dropped the subject. "I'm not getting anywhere with this." He sounded so disappointed, Dean felt bad for messing with him. It probably hadn't helped.

"Maybe you're trying too hard, Sam. Besides, how the hell are you supposed to meditate in a park anyway? Do you even feel safe here?"

Sam shook his head slowly. "Dean, I never feel safe."

"Smart boy. Me neither. And this place isn't helping."

Within an hour, they were checked out of the hotel and back on the highway.

"If anywhere, Bobby's place'll help," Dean promised. Place was warded up tight, and unlike Lawrence, it had actual good childhood memories. If Sam wanted to meditate, he ought to be able to there.

Sam nodded absently as he spoke to Missouri on the phone, thanking her for the help and promising to tell her if the auto-writing thing worked out. "She couldn't talk long," Sam said, flipping his phone shut. "I caught her at the pharmacy, buying insulin."

~~

It would be a few days before they reached South Dakota. Dean relaxed the farther they got from Kansas, even more when they slipped out of the Midwest and into the hill country of the north, where the air was dryer, the horizon closer when it was there at all.

It helped that Sam wasn't agitated as he'd been since shooting the crossroads demon. He mostly sat complacently and looked out the window, empty notebook page lying idle on his lap. Dean wondered what it had been about the crossroads demon that upset Sam so much. He'd expressed regret at killing Casey and Father Gil. Sincere regret. And then he'd gone off and killed another host, probably a pretty young woman in an impressively low-cut dress. Not the actions of someone wrestling with guilt. Not the actions of the Sam Dean had raised and knew so well.

And now here he was trying to make it right. That, at least, was more familiar. Sam screwing up and feeling guilty. Sam trying to be a good person, acting as if it went against his instincts.

The sun set on the driver' side of the car, and Dean moved the visor to block it, casting a few more dull shadows across the interior. Off to the side, Sam nodded against the window, still clasping a pen in hand. Dean kept driving a few hours after dark. They were going to sleep in the car anyway, might as well shorten the night. When he finally pulled over in a little turnoff on national forest land, Sam groaned and started to wake up.

"Flip you for the back," Dean said, even though he knew Sam was stupid tired.

"Wha--? No, you take it. 'M good here." He leaned back down against the door. 

Dean wasn't about to argue, but he did pass a pillow back up for Sam, who hugged it close to his shoulder.

All that was left was to offer good night. "Yeah," Sam returned.

~~

Soon after dawn, Sam eased himself free of the space between seat and door and slowly worked a major crick out of his neck. It made a sound like every single vertebra had popped, waking Dean.

"Dude. That isn't healthy."

Probably not, Sam had to concede. "Where's my toothbrush?"

"In my pack," Dean answered, like that was logical. "In the trunk."

Sam opened the door and almost fell out. He hated sleeping in the car, no matter the necessity of it. Thinking of that, he did a quick scan of the little forested clearing Dean had parked them in. No FBI? Check. No demons? Check. Good. Time to clean up.

He leaned back in to grab the keys off the ignition, and noticed his notebook in the foot-well, top page crinkled around the edges, a large, dark-inked word scrawled across its length. 

Sam stared. He picked up the page and stared some more. After a minute or two, Dean crawled out of the back seat and looked over his shoulder.

"What language is that, Sam?"

"I have no idea."


	4. Chapter 4

  


They used a camera phone to send the word ahead to Bobby.

"I don't think it's a pictogram," Sam said. "I mean, it seems like a bunch of individual letters."

"Looks old," Dean said, and didn't bother explaining. Sam thought it looked ancient.

"Which way does the script read?"

Sam elbowed him. "How am I supposed to know?"

"You wrote it," Dean said, like that made this Sam's area of expertise. Sam studied the word some more, wondering where it had come from, how he'd known to draw it.

_"It's not magical. It's meditative. Auto-writing helps you get in touch with answers you already know but don't consciously realize. Nothing psychic about it."_

Sam was beginning to doubt that (though he'd kept repeating it to Dean all morning). He'd never seen a language like this in his life. He wondered if anyone had, it seemed that foreign.

"Call Missouri," Dean said. Not something Sam would have expected to hear so soon after their visit, but it seemed they had a good reason now.

~~

"You say it's one word?" Missouri sounded pained. "Honey, most people write a sentence or two at least."

Sam met Dean's eyes, trying to appear reassuring as Missouri continued.

"And I don't know about this foreign language business. If it's not a language you speak, you shouldn't have known how to write it."

"But I did. It looks like a real word, too." It felt like one. "You said this worked using the subconscious. Is it possible—"

"That you tapped into something outside yourself? Sam, anything's possible. I don't know what your powers are or who's looking over your shoulder."

"What?"

Dean's head came up at Sam's sudden outburst, and Sam smiled weakly. The last thing they needed was Dean getting perturbed over something Sam couldn't, at the moment, help.

"Calm down," she said, drawing the words out. "I didn't sense anything with you, and I would have told you if I had. Even your demon friend didn't come visit while you were with me."

Sam needed to never again share space with a psychic. He glanced guiltily up at Dean.

"Okay. Okay. Will you call me if you think of anything?"

"Of course. Sam," she said. "I'm proud of you for trying so hard, even if the results are a little…."

"Freaky?"

"Pretty much. Take care, Sam."

He flipped his phone shut, a little cross because he didn't particularly need Missouri's pride in him at the moment. Maybe not ever, despite the peace they'd made between them.

Dean looked down at him from where he leaned against the car, and Sam shifted in the passenger seat, legs hanging out to the ground. "She's got nothing."

"I thought so. Brush your teeth and let's get going. I need some coffee."

~~~

Bobby, as always, had something.

They arrived at his doorstep well after sunset, and he held up a sheet of computer paper when they walked inside.

"It's angelic script," he announced.

Dean was bleary from too many hours driving. He needed a beer and a bed, not necessarily in that order, maybe a meal somewhere in between. Sam, however, was on, and had been on the entire trip, theorizing all the way, high on a string of ideas. For a while, it had been like the old days, him and Sam on the road, trading possibilities back and forth. Imp versus fairy, selkie versus water demon, burgers for lunch versus pizza. It was good, Sam no longer brooding. Good enough that Dean hadn't worried too much about the mysterious word Sam had drawn. In fact, he'd found himself resenting the end of the trip.

"Hi Bobby! Long time no see! How's the dog?"

Bobby gave him a long, fond look and then the finger before handing the sheet of paper to Sam. Dean crowded into Sam's side so he could look too.

It was a list in Roman characters, spelling out what had to be transliterations.

"I've got a colleague over at the Museum of Antiquities," Bobby explained. "She says it's rare, which I could have told her since it's not in a single book I own." 

Strangely, Dean felt his first prickling of unease. He hadn't been overly concerned when Sam drew the odd script on a ragged sheet of notebook paper; they'd been through prophetic dreams and demon possession. They could handle a foreign language. That Bobby had never seen it, that gave him pause.

"But you said it was angelic script," Sam said. "It's not Enochian?"

"Way older than that," Bobby said. "And more authentic in terms of whether it's actually angelic. This has been found at a few dig sites that predate most of recorded history. Cradle of civilization."

"How do you know it's angelic?"

"The context of the digs makes it out to be a religious language. And they have texts found practically alongside that describe where the words come from. ‘Messengers from the sky.'"

That was typical. Sam tries to figure out what's going on in his own head, and he gets a code word from above.

Sam scanned the transliterations. "So what does it mean?"

Bobby shrugged. "We don't have a dictionary, and that particular word doesn't appear anywhere they've seen. But the linguists somehow constructed a pronunciation key." He gestured at the paper. 

Dean squinted at it again and clapped his hands once, loudly. "Well, I guess now we can sound out that mysterious word we don't know the meaning of. There's a huge relief!"

Bobby said nothing, casting Dean a glance. But Sam was still studying the list. "Maybe we should."

Dean snatched the paper from Sam's hand and crumpled it up.

"Hey!"

Turning from the entranceway to the kitchen, Dean tossed back, "I'll give it back when you have a better idea what this is, starting with what it means, where it came from and why it rang down your antenna."

Sam followed closely and tried to grab his arm from behind. Dean pulled away. "It's angelic, Dean. I asked for help. Maybe this is it."

Goddamnit, he sounded hopeful. Dean never had any idea what to do when Sam turned faithful for no good reason. No matter how often he had to do it, he hated to rain on Sam's parade.

Didn't mean he wouldn't, though. "And maybe this is a trick from the demons out to get us, Sam. Did you think of that?"

"But it's angelic script!"

"That nobody knows anything about! Some dudes ten thousand years ago tell a story about winged men, and that's enough for you?"

"That was succinct," Bobby muttered from the doorway of the kitchen, but neither of them paid him any attention.

"Bobby vouches for it!"

"And now I'm going to bed. You two sort this out and find yourselves someplace to sleep."

As Bobby turned and left, Sam pulled Dean aside and spoke quietly. "Dean, I'm trying here, okay? I have less than a year to figure out how to keep you from dying. I've killed four innocent people so far, and even though it hasn't helped, if push comes to shove, I'll probably kill more. This right here—" he shook the papers in his hand—"is my nonviolent alternative. I concentrated on saving you, and this is what appeared."

Who the hell used words like nonviolent alternative anyway, Dean wanted to say. But he stayed silent, weighing the matter. He didn't believe in angels. Probably there had been some literate creature a few millennia ago that could fly. Fine, right? It was more believable than this angel crap.

"It could be from anywhere, Sam."

"I'm going to read these transliterations aloud. And if they don't work for me, you're going to try."

And watch Sam drop dead because he'd messed with the deal? "No way."

"Way, Dean. Way." Sam grabbed the paper back, frowned fiercely and sat down at the heavy table in the middle of the kitchen.

Yeah, if Sam ever went dark-side, he'd have to work on the threatening dialogue. Dean sighed and opened the fridge, hoping Bobby stocked lunchmeat. He could use a sandwich while he kept an eye on Sam.

~~

The list of phonetic spellings took up two columns. Most of the differences in pronunciation were pretty subtle, with the "S" sound represented by at least fourteen permutations of itself. _Sh. Sz. Ss. Z. Zz._ A few variations of the Castilian _S_ , some with instructions noted for how to shape the tongue. The last sound was a bizarre guttural that couldn't quite be represented in Roman letters.

"They did a bang-up figuring out that alphabet," Dean said around a bite of ham and cheese. "You know how ridiculous you sound?"

Sam ignored him and kept running down the list, saying each word slowly and carefully.

"How do you even know when you've said it right?"

_Sj_? Sam squinted and tried to get his mouth around it.

Dean subsided after a while. He sat back sipped his beer while Sam struggled down the list. Eventually, Sam put down the paper. He'd try again later, if Dean's try didn't work. As if reading his mind, Dean shook his head.

"Not happening."

"I'm not gonna die just because you said some word."

"I'm pretty sure helping you research ways to save me counts as reneging."

Sam doubted it. This was just Dean being overly protective. And Sam had a feeling, the more Dean argued against it, that Dean had to do this in order for them to get anywhere. They could spend the year tooling around the country swatting down demons and killing innocent hosts, or they could be smart about this.

"If you don't do this, I'll go research answers somewhere on my own."

He hadn't planned to say it, felt immediately that he shouldn't have. This was a new level of brinksmanship, unfair in more ways than Sam could count. But this was Dean's life. Sam couldn't take back his words.

Dean stood and slammed down the beer bottle. It made a loud, hollow sound against the chipped plywood of the table. "You do whatever the hell you want, Sam. That's what you always do anyway."

As his brother's even footsteps echoed from the stairway, Sam thought, Why did he trade his life for mine? 

Sam confirmed to himself that Dean had gotten a bum deal when, before sacking out on the couch, he slipped the printout under Dean's door.

~~

In the morning, Dean opened his eyes and thought about leaving Sam here at Bobby's. There was no reason he shouldn't, besides the demons after them both, the one demon girl who kept appearing at Sam's shoulder, the fact that Sam was intent on getting into more trouble than even Dean himself could stir up, and the fact that Dean had about one hundred ninety-eight days left to live, and no visiting hours in Hell.

Even so, Dean wanted to leave. This thing between him and Sam had grown toxic. Sam had never been one to issue ultimatums—that was Dad's purview, the way he kept Sam in check until Sam finally walked out that door. Sam preferred reasoned arguments, and come to think of it, he'd kept using those up until he'd threatened to leave.

By the look on Sam's face, he'd been a little surprised at himself, if not completely sorry. Dean understood. He did. But it still wasn't the kind of crap he'd tolerate from Sam. Dean had left Sam behind on a road in the middle of nowhere back when they were searching for Dad and hunting small-time creatures. He could do it again.

Except. Except for how they didn't have time for this shit. 

The deal with the crossroads bitch hadn't affected his day to day life at all. He hadn't had to sacrifice anything, change the way he lived. Now, for the first time, Dean realized how constrained he really was.

With time running out, he had to keep the big picture in mind, even when it meant bending over for his brother.

"Well, that was just wrong," he muttered. Trying to think of an analogy that didn't involve anything lurid with his brother, Dean swung his feet to the floor and stretched.

And caught sight of the paper.

_Forget this winged chariot crap,_ Dean thought. _I'm going to strangle him._

Dean scooped up the crumpled sheet and considered tearing it up, or taking it outside to burn. But then Sam would just ask Bobby for another copy off the computer, and that would get Bobby on Dean's back for acting like a punk. Dean sighed and sat back down on the bed, eyeing the lists on the printout.

The words didn't look dangerous. Probably, if Dean said them without the intent of weaseling out of the deal, Sam would be okay. He didn't even know what the word meant, only that it came from the angels or some shit like that.

He looked up. "Now you guys choose to help? Where were you when my dad died?" _When my house caught fire._

No heavenly voice answered, which was okay with Dean because it was too early to deal with harp music anyway.

The pronunciations all sounded similar on Dean's lips, as he silently formed the sounds. The word they described was clear to Dean, though he'd never heard it. He repeated it in his head, and it gave him the same bodily sensation as the demon's kiss. A tightening of the skin, a prickle wherever his hair could stand on end.

Yeah. This word had something to do with his contract. It wouldn't hurt Sam. It didn't have anything to do with Sam. If he wanted to be safe, though, Dean would leave it unsaid.

~~

Woken suddenly, Sam fell off the couch and bumped his head on the coffee table.

A booming, male voice reverberated around the house, like someone had set up heavy-duty speakers in all the rooms, only it had a clear and present quality, no electronic filtering or other barrier between the speaker and Sam's ears. 

It droned without pause, in English. 

"…terms shall be available to the parties of the first and second part upon request…."

Sam scrambled up and out from the covers twisted about his legs. Upstairs, Bobby banged out of his room and yelled, "What in the—"

Dean's baritone called out a little too low to hear below the steady bass recitation, which Sam hadn't woken well enough yet to process. He raced upstairs and found Bobby standing at the doorway of Dean's room, wearing a pair of pajamas, the pattern and color long since lost through laundering. For once, he wasn't wearing his cap.

"What's going—"

He pushed past Bobby and found Dean sitting on his bed in his underwear, the printout in his hand. Dean looked embarrassed and freaked.

"Good morning?"

"You read it," Sam said. He smiled in relief, ten times lighter than when he'd woken up. Dean glared.

"What the hell is that?"

"Be quiet," Bobby barked. He had his head cocked, listening closely to the mysterious voice.

It spoke at a measured pace, pitched low, neither friendly nor hostile. "…party of the second part shall remit his life and soul to the party of the first part on the date of the transaction, one year past. The date of remission is May 2, 2007, as measured by the Roman calendar. Twenty-eight days prior, the party of the second part may begin to be visited by the hounds of Hell, which may approach no closer than one hundred yards, as measured by the American metric system. On the date of remission, the aforementioned hounds may approach the party of the second part and take possession of his life and soul, which will be remanded to the party of the first part. This contract has no authority over the parties of the first and second part following the completion of the exchange."

And it went on. And on. 

As it continued laying out the particulars, Sam gaped at Dean. "It's reading your contract."

Dean gave him a wordless "no, duh" look that did nothing to cover up the dismay that had clouded over his face as they started listening.

"Did you know you were agreeing to all this?"

"She set a few terms, and then we locked lips." Dean's voice was defensive. "I thought it was a verbal agreement."

Sam fought the urge to throw himself on Dean and pummel him. The tangible reality of what his brother had given up to save him had never been more clear than at this moment, as Sam listened to an indifferent reader spell out the ways Dean had consigned himself, down to the last legal detail. Maybe Sam would have actually attacked Dean, except that Dean still sat with his feet folded under himself on the bed, covers pushed back, still wearing boxers and a white t-shirt. He was young and deceptively vulnerable, pale skin over lean muscle, hair mussed.

No one was touching Dean. Not Sam. Not a single wretched demon in Hell. 

Bobby had grabbed up the sheet of paper and found a pen somewhere, was taking notes as quickly as he could on the blank side of the paper.

"…shall render this contract void, and the goods and services rendered to the party of the second part shall be returned forthwith. This contract shall be binding upon all parties with no revision permitted. However, in the case of the destruction of the physical manifestation of this contract, the terms of the contract may no longer be enforced. The goods and services already rendered will remain the property of the party of the second part, with no compensation owed…."

The voice wound down with a long spurt of legalese that Sam didn't think he'd understand even if he'd been listening, but Sam hardly noticed.

He, Bobby and Dean stared at each other.

"Did that say what I think it said?" Bobby finally asked.

Dean appeared deep in thought, and a little shell-shocked.

"It said we can get out of the deal by destroying the contract," Sam confirmed. He might need to listen again, just so he could trust what they'd heard.

"I can't be here while you two discuss this," Dean said. He gestured at the door. "Beat it."

Sam and Bobby exchanged looks. "Kitchen's got a good table," Bobby said. "We can start planning."

"Yeah. Better go get your thinking cap," Sam muttered, smiling a bit when Bobby glared at him before turning back to his bedroom. Hopefully he'd change clothes too.

Dean got up and slammed the door behind them as they started down the stairs. 

~~

He felt bad for slamming the door, didn't like to mess around with Bobby's house. 

Dean sat down and tried to understand what had happened. He'd been right about the word being harmless to Sam. He wouldn't have spoken it if he'd had the slightest doubt.

Despite that, he felt… weird about saying it. Because what was the point? Given his druthers, Dean would rather not go to Hell. In fact, he'd feel pretty dumb if he got there and only then found out about this loophole. But to be perfectly honest, he didn't want Sam to think he'd caved because of a threat. And yet, there he was, testing what might turn out to be a get out of Hell free card, and doing what Sammy had demanded.

Dean smacked his fist into his palm. Again, he wanted to leave, even though he knew he wouldn't. Almost all the times he'd wanted to, Dean never had. Almost, it was something he wished he could do before he died. Not for long, but for long enough.

Sam and Bobby were speaking in the kitchen, their voices thrown from downstairs. Dean stood and dressed. He'd spend the day out in the lot, find an engine to tinker with. Let Sam do his thing and leave Bobby to temper whatever mad plan Sam devised. And if they could find the contract, wherever it was, maybe Dean would stand by as Sam burned it.

"Hey, Dean?" Sam's voice from below. "We need to hear it again!"

Dean sighed. Why not?

One word, spoken, and then so many more, describing what he had done. Party of the second part. That was him.

~~

The rub of it was, they had no idea where to find the contract. A whole lot of guesses, most of them logical, but no place to start. Dean's contract, which they'd recorded on tape and on which they'd taken extensive notes, yielded no clue. 

"I'm also worried about what this might mean," Bobby said. "This ‘physical manifestation' business. It implies there's a noncorporeal—Sam, are you listening?" Sam looked up from rereading the contract. Bobby had a pencil tucked between his ear and the rim of his cap. They had some books spread out on the kitchen table, open to pages that needed reexamination in light of the new lead. 

Sam had taken for granted before that killing the demon who held the contract, the party of the first part, would be enough to nullify the deal. But after parsing the esoteric legal language, it had become clear the contract would be passed on to a designate in the case of the death of the party of the first part.

Sam would have wasted the entire year going after that demon. Even if he'd found him and killed him with the Colt, it would have been murder for nothing, a human host dead and Dean still on his way down. Sam couldn't tell whether the roiling in his stomach had more to do with relief that that would not be the case, or with the horror of knowing how far he would have gone to kill that one demon.

Sam didn't like to think it, but he would have waded through blood to save Dean. The only thing that made it wrong, in a growing cavern of Sam's mind, would have been if it didn't work. He wondered offhand when he'd become someone for whom the ends justified the means. Had Jess fallen in love with that man, or had Sam changed that much since her death? He wished she were around to tell him.

"Sam, I said are you listening?"

Sam looked up. He'd been staring off into the text. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm with you. How are we supposed to find this thing?

Bobby made a frustrated sound. "These books aren't going to help."

"All right. So I'll try to auto-write the location."

Bobby nodded a little too slowly.

"What?"

"Sam, you're tapping into something here, something bigger than you. If you somehow sense it's not a… friendly source… you need to say so."

"To be honest, Bobby, I don't know what it was that helped me. I wrote it while I was dozing off in the car. Don't remember doing anything, or sensing anything."

"No angels whispering in your ear? Or devils?"

Sam laughed, a small laugh. "Neither one. I'll try to see if anything is wrong this time."

~~

According to Sam, Bobby's place did make it easier for Sam to reach a meditative trance. As far as Dean saw, it only provided more safe places for Sam to nap. Over the next few days, Dean found Sam asleep more often than not, pen held loosely or fallen from between his fingers, pad of paper bridging his knees. 

He found him, first, head lolling against the headrest in the front seat of Dean's car. It made sense; that was where the magic had worked the first time. But lightning didn't strike twice. When Dean finally roused him so he could get some dinner while any was left, Sam had worn a mixture of contrition and, aimed at the car, betrayal. It had been pretty funny, though Dean hadn't said so. He'd walked ahead of Sam into the house and let the screen door close behind him before Sam reached the front step.

Sam immediately moved on from the car. That evening, Dean found Sam with his eyes closed in one of the downstairs book depositories Bobby called a library. This time he was actually meditating, though he seemed to be having trouble keeping his head up. Dean had wanted to share a beer or something, still at war with himself over how mad he really was at Sam. He backed quietly out of the room. Later on, he returned with a blanket and pillow, which Sam accepted blearily from where he'd slid to lie down along the dusty leather couch. Dean stood looking down at him, barely noticing the blank pages set on the floor. Who knew where the pen had rolled off to.

In the morning, Dean came downstairs to find a dirty bowl and glass on the table, evidence that Sam, despite his best efforts, still needed to eat. Dean washed the dishes, used to being the only one who ever did so, including Bobby, and peeked into a few of the downstairs rooms before deciding he'd had it with tagging along after Sam. It wouldn't hurt to see him every once in a while, but Dean was done. 

The day before, Dean had made a little progress on a pink convertible that he'd messed around on in the past. He could work on the brake lines today, in anticipation of ever getting her running. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to be optimistic about something.

Dean checked the Impala before crossing the lot, more to check for Sam than anything else. Sam wasn't there.

Instead, Sam had his feet hanging out the open window of a late-model Ford not too far from the convertible. He had his shoes off, toes wriggling arhythmically, the only part of him not shaded from the strong morning sun. His eyes were closed, pad of paper and pen held loosely. Dean felt himself ease a little. He went over to the convertible and started work.

By lunchtime, Sam was asleep.

~~

Bobby was out doing good or wooing the town's widder-lady or some shit. He'd said where he was going, but Dean hadn't heard all the way, and it didn't sound too exciting, so he'd raised a hand in farewell and kept messing with the underside of the car. Now Dean had a game on Bobby's old TV set and a beer, and the den all to himself until Sam walked in and looked blearily down at him.

Blearily and cautiously. 

So, he'd noticed all the fun they'd been having till now. Dean raised his eyebrows in question, and Sam shrugged minutely. Dean couldn't in a million years say what had passed between them, but it must have meant something because Sam sat down heavily next to him on the couch.

"You know, I don't think it's called auto-writing for the reason you think it is."

"Shut up," Sam said. He stole a big sip of Dean's beer and sat back.

"Hey, at least you're catching up on your Z's, Sammy-boy. Gotta admit you've been looking a little worn out." Worn out but alive; since Cold Oak, Dean hadn't worried overmuch about any of Sam's lost sleep.

"No, as a matter of fact, I actually am meditating. At first."

Dean laughed. 

"Don't know why it's not working," Sam muttered. 

Dean shrugged and kept his eyes on the game. He wanted to be encouraging, but he was afraid of making it worse. This loophole might do the trick, but it might not. It might be something Sam and Bobby worked on for the next seven months or so and still didn't get running. Like that pink little number in Bobby's yard. Dean knew exactly how much he'd get done on her before May rolled around. So did Bobby and even Sam. But you never told Sam to stop anything unless you wanted to egg him on. 

They watched the game in silence until Sam got bored and walked out without a word. Dean sighed and took a swig of what beer Sam had left, but then Sam came back, familiar pad of paper in his hands. Dean rolled his eyes.

Fifteen minutes later, Dean could swear Sam was asleep. He was leaning mostly toward Dean, head close to his shoulder but not quite there, breath even. Dean considered moving so he could stretch out, but decided he could sit well enough where he was. 

It took him a moment to notice Sam's hand slowly moving across the notebook page on his lap.

"Sam?" Dean whispered.

Sam didn't answer, but he huffed sleepily. His hand kept creeping across the page, one slow line after another. Dean watched in fascination, wondering if he should jostle Sam from his trance, if the passive act of allowing Sam the answers counted as weaseling out of the deal. The notes on the contract had made that a dimmer possibility than Dean had feared, but still. On some level, he was tempted to stop this blind scrawl; on another, he could barely wait to see what it would say. 

When Sam had completed one English word, he retraced it again and again, until the letters were as thick and black as the previous ones. Dean barely breathed.

Trying to steal the pad only made things worse when Sam woke up or snapped out of it or whatever the hell he did and said, "Dean, what are you—"

And Dean scowled, because it was too late and Sam saw the word he'd written right there in big capital letters.

HELL

They stared at it in silence until Sam saw Dean's grip on the pad. He looked up at Dean. "You can't stop me."

Dean swallowed. This was it. He didn't know what it was, but he knew this was where things changed at last. "You think so?" He wrenched the pad out of Sam's hand and tossed it aside. "Contract's in Hell, Sam, and only one of us is getting the free tour."

"I can get it out." He stood, Dean following him up. "I know someone." Distracted, headed for the stairs, on the point of muttering to himself, Sam didn't anticipate Dean turning him around to push him backward. He fell back against a stack of books on a table, and seemed to see Dean for the first time. "What? We almost have it, Dean. This is your ticket out of Hell."

"Or your ticket into the pit." Dean knew Sam. Sam was smart and driven, but he didn't always think things through. He'd made it to Stanford, but antagonized Dad along the way, splitting up the family beyond physical distance. He'd saved Dean's life in Nebraska, and some poor bastard had died in Dean's place because Sam hadn't wanted to research too thoroughly. Sam always had worthy intentions, but somehow—as with Dean's—they always turned out wrong. "I'm not letting you screw with my deal anymore. The contract's out of reach. It's over, Sam."

"It's not over until you're free, Dean." Sam pushed himself away from the table and shouldered past Dean, who watched him climb the stairs. Going up to his room to get his things. Dean knew the kid. He knew Sam's penchant for running off for his own answers, and he knew he had already used a lot of capital to keep Sam this close for so long. If it came down to physical restraint, it would be over. Sam would go off and fight on his own, and Dean would spend his final days with Bobby and the damn car.

He paced the entranceway for a few minutes before Sam strode back down the stairs. Sam stopped short when Dean blocked the door. He wasn't tensed up for a fight, just determined to get out there and do whatever idiot thing he thought would help.

"I don't get you," Sam said, like he truly wished he did. "All you live for is to take care of me. And all you want now is to die. Am I that bad, Dean?"

"Jesus, Sam." _I used to tie your shoes. I mopped up your spills and cut your hair. Now I want to keep you alive and out of Hell, and you decide to take it personally._ "Stop saying that. You're stuck on calling me a suicide waiting to happen. Well, I'm not, Sam. If you're going to walk out that door, you're not going to blame me for it, you understand?"

Sam's face shut down, locked itself into a mask of determination not unlike the one he'd worn out the door on the way to college. "When I walk out this door, Dean, you're not invited."

Dean held himself back from shooting his arm out at that impassive face.

Sam left.

Dean let him.

"I'm gonna fix this, Dean," Sam said before he shut the door. "You just wait."

"I'll give you about seven months, dude," Dean replied, dreading them already. He just hoped he didn't see Sam after that.


	5. Chapter 5

  


Sam didn't look back at the house until walking well into the darkness of Bobby's lot. Dean hadn't followed him out, which stood to reason. Dean never backed off after a certain point. What did surprise Sam was that Dean had let him go in the first place. For a moment, Sam had anticipated a very heavy punch.

The other day, Bobby had lent Sam the keys to a pickup, so he could go into town for groceries. Sam still had the keys, so he climbed into the truck and took off in the dark, unable to see anything but shadows beyond his headlights. The night had a strange quality, no stars or moon in the sky, cloud-cover completely black, as though Sam were driving alone on a treadmill of earth and pavement. He wanted to get far enough away that Dean would have trouble following him if he changed his mind and went after him, so he took a meandering route past the desolation of Bobby's portion of South Dakota, climbing northward two hundred miles until he came up short on gas. 

At a dead-quiet Texaco station, he asked the attendant to fill the tank while he went in and washed up. When he sat back down in the driver's seat, a loud suck-pop sound greeted him. He jumped and discovered Ruby in the passenger seat, lollipop sticking out of her mouth. 

"Hey there, stranger."

Sam consciously loosened his grip on the steering wheel. "Jesus, Ruby—" He caught her flinch at the name and cut himself off. She was a demon, so of course it would affect her. He let himself admit Dean's concern wasn't entirely unjustified.

"Heard you whacked the crossroads bitch. Good call."

"Yeah, she mentioned you," Sam said. "Complimented your work on the Colt."

"I'll just bet." Her lip twisted, and Sam wondered what the beef between them had been. Not that it mattered. The fact they didn't get along added to Ruby's credibility. The enemy of my enemy, Sam thought. Maybe he really could count on her for this.

"I need your help for something," Sam said.

Ruby spun the lollipop slowly between her lips and teeth, eyes on his. "Well, this is a nice surprise. Let's go somewhere and talk."

Sam nodded and started the car.

~~

They drove out to an abandoned barn that Ruby directed him to. Sam wasn't completely stupid. He took out Dean's EMF reader that he would never admit out loud was pretty ingenious and scanned the area for activity. The moon had come out from the clouds, or maybe he'd just driven out past the clouds themselves. Nothing moved in the shadows, not even the wind, and the only demon Dean's EMF meter detected was Ruby, squealing and ticking when he waved it near her.

"Happy yet? I'm on your side, Sam." She had finished the sucker by now and chewed delicately on the stick with her front teeth.

Sam saw no reason to disbelieve her beyond the obvious, so he shrugged and started explaining about the auto-writing and the contract. The stick fell from her mouth when he described the voice reading Dean's deal aloud. "Son of a bitch," she whispered.

"What?"

"I just never heard of that," Ruby said. "Angels are heavy duty." She looked around, as though one might be hiding behind the barn doors. "Go on. Did the voice say who owns his contract?"

"No. But it did give us a way to break it. I have to destroy the contract itself."

Ruby nodded slowly. "But you don't even know where it is." She made it sound like a question. Something about her reactions here made this conversation different from their previous ones. It was the first time uncertainty had crept into her voice.

"No, I used the auto-writing to find that out too. It's in Hell, Ruby."

She stared at him and said flatly, "Then it's out of reach."

"It can't be."

"It is. Trust me on this. To save Dean, you need to develop your powers and kill the demon who holds his contract."

"No, you're wrong. The contract says that won't help. It'll just pass Dean's soul to the next demon in line."

"Shit." Ruby turned around in a circle. "Okay, I see where you're going with this. You want me to take you downstairs so you can destroy the contract yourself."

"You're not exactly Beatrice, but it's all I've got."

"That was Virgil," she murmured, obviously thinking about something else.

"Whatever. Can you do this?"

She glared. "I've got news for you, Sam. Dante was a poet. He didn't actually visit Hell. No one living goes down there."

He almost said, So I'll die. And he would, he realized, if it meant Dean wouldn't burn. But he also realized there were different hells, and he didn't want Dean in any of them. "You're not living," he said.

"No. I'm outta here. You call me when you're ready to fight the bad guys." She turned, but Sam grabbed her wrist.

"No. You're the only one who can do this for me, Ruby. If you leave now, I'll send you back there anyway."

She twisted her wrist out of his grasp and backed into a defensive stance. "Do you even know what you're asking? It's a world of everlasting torment." She cut herself off at Sam's look. "Oh, yeah, I guess that's why you're asking. Anything to save Dean, even if means someone else has to suffer."

Sam honestly didn't give a damn whether Ruby suffered down there. "I just need you to do this. I'll help you get back out if I can."

She stared at him from under hooded eyelids. Sam held her gaze.

"You willing to make a deal, then, Sammy?"

Seeing she might help him, Sam let the name thing go. "If you destroy Dean's contract, I'll raise you back up. Just show me how and tell me when, and I'll do it."

"That's a start. But it still puts only you ahead in the end. You'll have your brother, but I'll be right where I am now, plus a fair bit of trauma."

"What else do you want?"

"Let me help you. You'll still have demons to fight. Something big is coming, and you'll need me. I'm willing to sacrifice if it'll help you trust me."

Sam blew out a breath. If Ruby saved Dean, it would pretty much prove she was on their side. "How?"

"When I make a suggestion, give it a shot. Hear me out when I have advice."

Sam nodded slowly. "I'll consider your advice, but I won't promise to take it."

"Good enough." She looked him up and down and licked her lips as languorously as she had her lollipop. "All right. You know how to get me down there. I'll give you the ritual that'll call me back up, and you'll perform that ritual in twenty-eight days, which should give me time to find out where the contract is held and infiltrate my way over to it." She took in his look of doubt. "It'll take years in demonic standard time. Only a month will pass up here."

Sam's stomach twisted, thinking of Dean trapped there exponentially longer than Sam could imagine.

"Oh, one more thing. I like this fleshsuit." She ran her hands up and down her hips, where her jeans pulled tightly. "I want to keep it. So you have it ready for me when I get back. Oh, don't be such a baby," she said at the look that must have crossed Sam's face. "She's got so many injuries, she'll probably die as soon as I leave. You just make sure she's not buried on consecrated ground—or buried at all. I don't want to dig my way up."

Sam stood speechless.

"Well? Is it a deal?"

"What happens if one of us reneges?"

"Then neither of us gets what we want. If I choose not to destroy the contract, you won't be able to call me back up. If you don't call me back up, or you don't keep this body ready for me, then I won't be able to destroy the contract, no matter how hard I try."

"Sounds fair." He had a moment to puzzle over the fact that the men in his family kept making deals with demons before Ruby pushed her lips against his. She tasted like cherry candy and waxy lip gloss. Her tongue swept into his mouth, licked his teeth and made itself at home against his tongue. Sam found himself repulsed and turned on at the same time, her breasts—someone else's breasts—pressed against his chest..

Finally she pulled away. "You're an okay kisser," she said. "We should work on that when I get back."

Sam drew the line at sex with possessed girls, and dead ones even more so. "Let's get started. On the exorcism, Jesus!"

Her smirk was interrupted by another flinch.

~~

Sam carved a devil's trap into the dirt using his good knife, and Ruby entered it quickly. "Don't want to lose my nerve," she said, hands fisted at her side. 

Sam mentally went over his agreement with Ruby one more time. He considered it a minor agreement as deals went, certainly involving nothing of the sacrifice Dean had made. In twenty-eight days, he'd call her back using the ritual she had made him write down in detail. She would have a body to inhabit, and Dean would be free.

Easy. Too easy, almost. 

"There's nothing you're not telling me, right?" Sam asked as he dug the exorcism out of his pack. "Nothing that could go wrong?"

Ruby rolled her eyes. "Isn't it a little late for that?"

That wasn't a yes or a no. "What aren't you telling me?"

Ruby looked pointedly at the bounds of the devil's trap surrounding her and folded her arms. "There is one thing. It may not be possible to destroy the contract. The demon who owns it could have it warded or too cleverly hidden. I'll have ten years to find a way around that, but there's a chance it won't be enough."

"Why didn't you say so before?"

"I forgot. But I want you to know now, if I come back and the contract is still in one piece, it's not because I didn't try. If you call me back and I can come, that means I did try. You follow?"

Sam walked up to the edge of the trap. "If you return without helping Dean, I will send you to right back where you came from. You follow?"

They glared into each other's eyes until Sam lifted his chin and reached for the exorcism.

Ruby made a visible effort at stoicism, but by the end, she was a screaming, swearing mess, her body hurled across the devil's trap from one side to another until finally black smoke shot out of her nose and mouth, and she dropped to the ground and kneeled in a huddled crouch. Sam flicked his eyes from the smoke to the body, hesitated, and spoke the final words. The smoke plunged toward the ground and disappeared, leaving behind electrified wisps that vanished soon after.

Ruby's body fell over in the short silence that followed, arms clutching her stomach. 

That was not the dead sprawl he'd expected. Sam swore and rushed to the girl's side. Her hair was a mess of long, frizzed tangles, hanging over most of her face, and her jacket was wet with blood. She was sobbing and wouldn't let him uncurl her.

"Hurts," she gritted. "Oh, God, it hurts."

"What hurts?" he asked. He didn't even have a first aid kit with him. Suddenly Sam missed the Impala, and his brother. "You're bleeding, I have to put pressure on it. How did this happen?"

She gasped the word "stomach" in a mess of uneven syllables. "Shot."

A gut wound, probably inflicted by Bobby. Sam cursed Ruby. She'd implied the girl was already dead, and Sam had believed her. He'd already been considering cold places he could stow the body, and here it was, breathing and crying for help.

"Damnit!" He pounded the ground with a fist.

"Please."

Sam lifted some long hair up from her face. It was like meeting someone for the first time. Same features, completely different now. Her face was bright red, matching the rims of her eyes, her mouth pulled down low as she wept. Jessica, too, hadn't looked at all like she had with the demon riding her.

He was kneeling over her in the gravel by an old barn, driveway long since wasted away, but he could imagine, if he tried, a pair of roads splitting off into four directions. He knew what Missouri would say—he knew she'd never open her door to him again if he sat here and held this girl while she bled out. Dean, likewise, might find a limit for once, if he knew. Not that he'd ever have to know. Dean wasn't psychic. Sam could hide this girl's body, go back to his brother and call Ruby back in twenty-eight days. Dean would never know a girl had died to save him.

"Please. It hurts."

He could put her out of her misery. It wouldn't take much. A hand over her mouth. He sat there for two minutes thinking it over.

~~

The ride to the hospital took a long time. Sam had to stay on the line with a nurse who gave him directions, which she could only do after he found a pair of cross-streets to tell her where he was. An ambulance met him halfway there, worked on Ruby's host on the side of an empty county route where only one car passed the entire time, stabilized her and took her the rest of the way. Sam followed in the truck.

He figured no one deserved to die out in the middle of nowhere, though he wasn't sure a hospital ranked much higher. At least they'd give her painkillers. That was likely what had convinced him. It was.

The emergency room nurse told him the girl was being worked on and showed him the coffee station in the waiting room. Sam made himself a cup and sat down. When she died, he'd have to find a way to steal the body. He couldn't bank on the possibility they'd keep her in the morgue as long as a month, and since she'd been shot, they'd probably do an autopsy. And if they identified her, family might come over and claim the body.

So, yes. Sam wiped some spilled coffee off the sleeve of his jacket. He had to get the body out of here as soon as she died, he decided, brushing some flakes of dried blood from his collar.

The police would be by soon. He supposed he could give them the old story about driving by and hearing screams or gunshots or something. He and Dean had so much practice with that, from returning victims to their homes or the hospital, that he'd gotten pretty good at making people believe it. He half-believed it himself; maybe that was why.

The police did come speak with him. They even took him to a room where they tested his hands and sleeves for gunpowder residue and searched him for weapons. Finding nothing, they left with a warning not to leave town. 

By the time a nurse tapped him on the shoulder, Sam had begun to worry that the girl would survive. It had been forty-four hours, and yes, the nurse confirmed, she had survived. Would be okay too, barring infection.

Sam took a shaky breath. That was fine. It was. He'd summon Ruby back, and she'd take possession of a live girl. Thanking the nurse, he got up and went to the washroom, where he leaned against the wall and stared into the middle space for long minutes.

Somehow, he wound up in a motel room bed, where he lay without sleeping even though sleep pushed relentlessly at the edges of his eyes.

"Okay," he said in the morning. "Okay." He took a shower so the blood would come off and went back to the hospital. "Is she awake?" he asked the nurse.

"Yes, I'm glad you're back. She's been asking for you and it doesn't look like anyone else is here for her."

Sam glanced around at the mostly empty waiting room. He wondered where this girl's family was. She'd only have a month to see them before Ruby took her away. "I'd like to see her," he said, even though he really didn't.

The nurse nodded and began to walk away, but another question occurred to Sam. "Wait. Did she tell you her name?"

~~

Bobby had, uncharacteristically, left a few messages that Sam didn't listen to. The really odd thing was Dean hadn't called. Sam thought about calling, to let him know he was okay and coming back sometime soon. There should be someone out there who knew where his family was. But he didn't pick up the phone. He'd deal with Dean once he had Francine taken care of. 

Francine. 

Now he had a name to go with that reddened face and pained whisper. That dispossessed body Ruby had promised was as good as dead, nothing Sam could have done. When Ruby came back, he was going to kill her. And somehow he'd kill her without harming Francine.

~~

"She's been a little upset," the nurse warned him as they neared the girl's room. "But she wanted to see you." She brought him to the door and stood by as he approached the bed. It was one of those good hospital beds that adjusted with a button, soft and firm below, white pillows generously holding up the small body at rest. Sam leaned over the side so she could see his face without moving if she opened her eyes. "Francine?"

She did open her eyes. They were rimmed deeply in red.

"How do you feel?" he asked, at a loss of what else to say. 

She shook her head, tears blotting her eyes. Sam realized "she's been a little upset" didn't begin to cover it. He looked back at the nurse, still standing in the doorway. She smiled encouragingly, glanced at her watch, and left.

"I'm sorry about all this," Sam said, though it wasn't exactly his fault what had happened to her. He couldn't have stopped Ruby from snatching her, and if he'd exorcised Ruby, she would have just found another host. Using the Colt wouldn't have done Francine any good either.

"Sam." She had a deeper voice than Ruby used. A different inflection on his name. "Sam, please. Don't let her come back." She couldn't control her tears, though her voice was almost steady. Sam couldn't answer. "I know what you said. But please, please don't let her take me again."

Sam blanched. "You heard that?"

She looked confused. "I hear almost everything. She lets me see too." Tears streamed down a face that held itself differently than Ruby had. It didn't seem as narrow or perfect. It looked more real. "Sam, she thinks we're friends. She talks to me all the time. She keeps telling me about the rewards." A sob escaped as she continued. "God, Sam. Please, please keep her away."

And really, there was nothing Sam could say to that. He waited for her to stop crying. It took about five minutes.

When she was done, Sam put a hesitant hand on her shoulder. "Francine. I'll be right back, okay?"

She sniffed, tired. "Are you going to help me?"

He thought about what Dean would say if he were here too. _Fuck's sake, Sam! What's wrong with you?_

"Yeah," he said. He swallowed. "Just gotta get a few things."

He went down to the parking lot and rummaged around in his bag, looking for one of the amulets Bobby had given them, and a permanent marker that would stand in until she was well enough for a tattoo. 

It was the empty car that did it, though. He stood leaning into the cab and Dean nowhere nearby and thought about a future of this and Dean in the ground. All because of now, because he knowingly chose a stranger over his brother.

The truck sputtered as he keyed the ignition. He hoped the cops didn't catch him leaving town, but he was already making up a story to explain himself if they did.

~~

The cab of Bobby's truck was far from airtight; Sam hadn't noticed it before his trip back, but he listened to the roar of wind and the growl of the engine and the squeak of the rusted suspension over the long trip to Bobby's.

Once, he almost turned back. Sam didn't like to rethink himself, but that had been all he'd done the last couple of weeks. He missed the certainty of doing the right thing. Going to college, moving in with Jess, deciding to propose. But ever since he'd ignored the premonitory dream of her on the ceiling, Sam's life had lost the simplicity he'd taken for granted. At first it had all been about finding her killer and wasting monsters along the way. Easy. Then he'd found himself holding the Colt on his dad, Dean bleeding and vulnerable behind him. Sam had found a workable alternative, if that was what you called shooting your father in the thigh, but it barely got them by, and the alternatives that followed had not been workable at all.

No matter what Sam did, someone would get hurt. He just had to make sure that person wasn't Dean.

Getting home to Bobby's place, it was a long three hours.

He arrived just after noon, the sun shielded by wan cloud cover. Climbing out of the truck, Sam realized he'd forgotten to gas it up. He sighed and looked around for the Impala, which was not in its usual spot. Or any spot, actually. 

As he neared the steps, Bobby came out the front door, holding out his hand. "Afternoon, Sam."

Sam grimaced out a smile and handed Bobby the keys to the truck. "Hi Bobby."

"If you weren't wanted by the FBI, I'd have reported it stolen." Bobby held Sam's eye. "You hear me?"

Sam wished borrowing Bobby's truck were the worst thing he'd done this week. "I hear you. Sorry. Is—is Dean here?" Maybe he was out on a burger run, or picking up a part from the auto shop.

"Nah, Dean left the day after you did. Said you'd know how to find him if you wanted to. I imagine that translates to calling him on his phone."

It did. He could use a satellite trace if necessary, but calling him might be less trouble. His stomach twisted a little, knowing Dean might pick up if he called. Sam wondered if he could live with Dean after this, if he could look Dean in the eye day after day. The frightening thing was, Sam really thought he could.

"Yeah." He summoned up a laugh. "Yeah, I'll do that. Can I come in?"

"Well, you're sure as hell not driving out of here." Bobby turned back inside. "I've got something to show you anyway."

Sam already had his phone out, set to call Dean, but he put it away and followed Bobby. "Does it have to do with the deal?" He started to say he had something in the works himself, but stopped, not wanting to go into it. Dean wasn't here, and Bobby might not understand trusting Ruby as much as he had, even though she'd helped him rebuild the Colt. 

"Yup. It's out here." Bobby led him out to the back porch, just as ramshackle as the rest of the house, screens ripped and junk piled in the corners, dirt blown in from outside. Sam had spent a summer, long ago, reading out here in the shade, before it had gotten quite this bad. Bobby came to stand before a cheap charcoal grill, one of the pan-sized barbeques you bought at the grocery store. Inside it sat a stack of worn papers and notepads. Sam recognized them.

"This is all our research on Dean's deal." He thumbed through the pages, spotted a cassette tape. "It's our notes on the contract we listened to."

"I also added an exact transcript of the contract. Word for word for word. Checked it three times. And let me tell you, angelic script we can barely pronounce is more comprehensible than demonic legal jargon."

"What's all this for? You're not going to…."

Bobby handed him a lighter. "I was thinking you'd want to do it."

Sam took the lighter. It had a picture of a woman in a red bikini on the front and back. "Okay…. Just, what exactly am I doing? Besides the obvious," he said when Bobby opened his mouth. "This isn't Dean's actual contract. He told you that's in Hell, right?"

"Yeah, this is where I tell you you're a moron, Sam. If you'd waited to let me know what your auto-writing got you, then you wouldn't have had to go and do whatever it was you did. Which, by the by, I can tell from looking at you had to be big and royally messed up."

Sam clenched his jaw tightly enough to hurt. 

"So," Bobby continued, "when Dean told me the contract was in Hell, it became clear to me there was no ‘physical manifestation' of it to be found. The wording had bothered me anyway. Why not just say ‘the contract' instead?"

"It was legalese," Sam said. "The whole thing was wordy and overwritten."

"Yeah, but also exact. Now, the ancient Egyptians, and most other ancient cultures in one way or another, believed in a shadow world, one that reflected our own. Objects, animals, people, all had souls that lived on another plane. Shadows. The physicality of a person or object has power in itself, though, too. And don't get me started on the power inherent in words and names. It gets a little mystical, but plainly speaking, there's nothing physical on the plane of existence we're referring to here. You know, Hell."

Sam was following just fine. "So the physical manifestation of the contract isn't actually in Hell. Why did I write that it was?"

"Because you didn't ask the right way," Bobby said. "You didn't say, Where is the physical manifestation of Dean's contract, did you?"

"Um, no."

"Gotta be exact, Sam. Even if you're in touch with something wants to help you. Dean's contract has a shadow self in Hell. It exists in verbal form on earth, the way Dean and the demon made it. There wasn't a physical manifestation until we recorded it and wrote it down."

Sam stared blankly. "Bobby, I think I need a minute."

Bobby harrumphed. "I think you need more than that." He left Sam alone, though.

_You've got to beat them at their own game, Sam_ , Missouri had said. _No other way to win against a demon. They have rules. Not like us. We're so used to making up our own rules, we forget they can't. They count on that._

In a daze, he lit the papers and made sure every scrap burned to ash. Bobby had thoughtfully left a canister of salt next to the grill.

~~

  
**Epilogue**

Dean had yet to find what he wanted from this new life. It turned out that the more time you had, the longer the hours grew, and the shorter your list of wants.

He wanted a comfortable position in bed, but the cast prevented that through the clever deployment of a pinched nerve. No matter how he lay or sat, that nerve wasn't going to let up. He had a few more weeks in the cast, but thought he might crack it open sooner to get some relief.

He also wanted a motel with decent cable, or a DVD player for rent. If he never saw another PBS membership drive in his life, he'd die happy. Even if he were still on his way to you-know-where, he'd die happy. Though the more recent episodes of Sesame Street weren't as bad as everyone said they were.

Mostly, he wanted some damn company. Bobby had been by to see him and offered to drive him back to South Dakota. But that had meant towing the Impala and sitting in the cab of Bobby's truck for three days, and Dean wasn't up for either. He wasn't up at all, and finally Bobby had left, sick of PBS himself. Fortunately, he'd left Dean awash in beer and well-stocked with food.

Dean took what he could get these days.

Bobby hadn't mentioned Sam, which Dean took to mean he hadn't seen him since Sam showed up at his house a few days after leaving Dean there. "He was pretty shook up," Bobby had said afterward. "I don't know what he did to try to get your contract out of Hell, but he turned white when I showed him how to break your deal. I lent him the truck again and he drove away like he had somewhere important to get to. He hasn't called you yet?"

Dean wasn't sure about that "yet" business. Two months later, Sam still hadn't called. And he hadn't picked up when Dean called him. Dean had been tracking him using GPS, and the phone kept showing up in different places, so he knew Sam was at least mobile. Dean had been on his way to catch him when he got sidelined by a hunt, and now he lay with his leg in a cast and his knee in a brace, and no idea what had happened to Sam.

Outside, the sun had set, which put the time at about four-thirty. Dean hated the winter more now than ever. The chill had got into his cast, along with an itch, and settled in to stay. Even if Dean had had it in him to venture out, the slush and snow in the unshoveled lot made it a matter of putting his life in his hands. He still wobbled out from time to time to start the car and clear snow away from her, but that was as far as he ever went.

The dark afternoon settled into true night. Dean turned off his crime drama reruns and closed his eyes. He preferred to sleep on his side, but that made the pinched nerve even worse, so he lay on his back and tried to sleep past the throb.

The empty double beside him was stacked with packages of food and his bags. Made for easy reaching, and if Sam were to walk in here out of the blue one day, maybe he'd get the message. No place for you, you bastard. 

Sam was actually on his way over. He'd left the laptop and Dean had taken it and there was little to do but track Sam's GPS during the commercials. Sam was driving in a straight line to Dean. Dean had spent the day piling junk up on the bed, and now he wondered what he would do if Sam didn't realize he could just clear it all off and sleep pretty good despite the lumpy mattress. If he came and left, at least Dean would know what he looked like these days, if he was doing well, if this gig they'd had since Stanford was over now that Dean had his soul back. 

To tell the truth, knowing those things, for better or worse, would be better than this idiotic silent treatment. Dean was pretty much done with that. If Sam left and didn't start answering his phone, Dean was going to heal up and kick his ass.

The lock on the door clicked sometime after one in the morning. Dean sat up, his back screaming from that nerve. The door opened slowly; Sam probably had assumed Dean would have a weapon aimed at him, but Dean was past that. He watched the shadows arrange themselves across the threshold as Sam entered, bringing a chill, and closed and locked the door again.

He kept the lights out. The room went very still for a while.

Sam cleared his throat and said with a scratchy voice, "Heard you broke your leg." He stood six foot seven and still sounded like the little boy Dean had helped raise. He let go a relieved breath.

"Compound fracture, plus I busted up my knee. I figure it's karma. Gain a soul, walk around on crutches for a while."

"That doesn't balance," Sam said, and cut himself off like he always did when he realized how far Dean had dragged him into triviality. "I sort of had some loose ends to tie up."

"Figured," Dean said. "You got those squared away?"

Sam's shadow shrugged. He trudged over to Dean's bed and lay down beside him, on top of the blankets. Dean moved carefully to make room. "Don't get your boots on my bedspread."

Sam obligingly untied his boots and kicked them to the floor.

For the first time in weeks, Dean began to feel comfortable in this bed. He had almost drifted off when Sam said, as though at the end of an intense monologue, "Dean? I suck."

"Could have told you that, Sam."

"No. I mean I think I'm a sociopath."

Dean elbowed Sam in the ribs, hard. "Don't be an idiot. No sociopaths in our family."

"Of course you would say th—"

Dean elbowed him again. "I'm going to sleep, dude."

Later, Sam would tell him he'd exorcised Ruby, but not why. He'd repeat the intel from Francine, Ruby's host, on the demons' war, this leader named Lilith and the apocalypse. He'd show Dean the new ways he'd devised to trap a possessed host long enough for an exorcism. Dean would more or less approve of it all, but he'd keep his enthusiasm quiet out of deference to the way Sam wouldn't look him in the eye as he explained it.

Knowing none of that, Dean nudged Sam as they drifted off. "Hey. You still trying not to suck so much?"

"Best I can."

~~

  
 _"You become a good person with practice."_  
– June Callwood

  
 _In a resolute struggle of good against evil, there are definite rules that must not be disregarded if it is to succeed._

  1. _Resolution must be based on a union of strength and friendliness._
  2. _A compromise with evil is not possible. Evil must under all circumstances be openly discredited. Nor must our own passions and shortcomings be glossed over._
  3. _The struggle must not be carried on directly by force. If evil is branded, it thinks of weapons, and if we do it the favor of fighting against it blow for blow, we lose in the end because thus we ourselves get entangled in hatred and passion. Therefore it is important to begin at home, to be on guard in our own persons against the faults we have branded.  In this way, finding no opponent, the sharp edges of the weapons of evil become dulled. For the same reasons we should not combat our own faults directly. As long as we wrestle with them, they continue victorious._
  4. _Finally, the best way to combat evil is to make energetic progress in the good._



– Hexagram from the I Ching

  
  



End file.
